


The Poetry of Logic

by RookSacrifice



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Atem the Philosopher, College AU, Drama & Romance, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Humor, Kaiba the Mathematician, M/M, Prideshipping, this math is trauma free I promise :)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:34:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 67,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25072426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RookSacrifice/pseuds/RookSacrifice
Summary: Mathematics is less related to accounting than it is to philosophy.Philosophy student Atem Mutou, sophist of sarcasm and fiend of fraternization, has only one thing standing between him and graduation at Domino University – the long procrastinated math credit. Despite his brother Yugi’s best advice, he picks “Introduction to Mathematical Logic” taught by one ruthless, argumentative blue-eyed grad student.It’s gonna be a long semester.
Relationships: Atem/Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Seto/Yami Yuugi, Kaiba Seto/Yami Yuugi | Atem
Comments: 215
Kudos: 372





	1. When the Tigris Met the Euphrates

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by my beloved undergraduate math professor and friend who during my four years as a math major met, fell in love with, and married a philosophy professor at our tiny liberal arts school. My senior year she taught "The Philosophy of Math" and they wrote the syllabus together. This is the class the one in the story is based on. I am so sorry your pure and beautiful heart had to be a part of this sin, Anne.

“Atem, you’re such a pretty idiot.”

“My beauty is a perpetual tyranny, Aibou.”

Yugi rolled his eyes at his brother, who conveniently ignored the idiot part. He bit into a fry, leaving a plop of ketchup on his own class schedule paper in front of him.

“It’s still vanity if you’re complimenting your own twin.” Anzu elbowed him in the ribs.

“It wasn’t a compliment!” Yugi said.

Atem hid his smile behind a sip of his beer. Yugi and Anzu had been together for years now, but he still blushed whenever she touched him.

“What’ja pharaoh boy do this week, Yuge?” Jou piped up.

“That whole pharaoh thing was only funny when Atem was in Egypt last semester, don’t keep feeding his already enormous ego.” Honda said.

“Yeah, it lives in his hair, that’s why it’s so huge.” Otoogi said.

Everyone laughed, even the usually quiet Ryou. Yugi made a show of snatching Atem’s schedule and reading it to Jou.

“Advanced Latin: Cicero, The Ethics of Love and Sex, Current Topics in Contemporary Philosophy: Almost everything concerning the concrete part of reality and last but most certainly not least…” Yugi’s eyes narrowed. “Introduction to Mathematical Logic taught by—and I cannot possibly stress this fact enough— _Seto Kaiba_.”

“Ain’t he dat asshole who failed you in Calc 2 sophomore year?”

“Yeah, he is. And what Atem doesn’t seem to realize is he won’t meet the requirements to graduate in May when Kaiba fails him, too.”

“I don’t fail anything, I only _win_.” Atem snapped.

“Look, Atem… You know I always have full faith in you but this is a class, not a card game. It’s not too late. You can still switch to literally anything else.”

“Is he young?” Mai asked. She was still waiting tables since her shift wasn’t over, but must have come by to see what all the commotion was about. “I have complete confidence you can seduce him to make the grade.”

“Thanks for the moral support, Mai, I’ll be sure to bring it up for class discussion in the ethics of love and sex first.”

Yugi groaned. “Don’t give him any ideas.”

“Why did you sign up if you knew how this jerk treated Yugi?” Anzu asked.

“The other intro math classes were huge lectures with hundreds of people, this class only has 25 registered.” Atem gave a casual shrug.

“That didn’t strike you as a major red flag?” Otoogi said.

“Well, the summary looked more tolerable than anything else offered,” He read from the paper again. “ _A historical examination on the evolution of mathematical proof and argument from Plato to Descartes to Russell._ It sounds more like philosophy than math.”

“Are you convincing us or yourself right now?” Honda said.

“There’s really no changing your mind once it’s made up, is there?” Yugi surrendered finally.

“I would die anywhere, mountain or molehill, to prove an argument.”

“Please remember this moment in two weeks, Atem.”

* * *

Monday. 8:03 AM. Late. With coffee.

Atem was morally opposed to early mornings and his definition encompassed anything before 11 AM. He found this was the sole topic his compatriots in the philosophy department held unanimous opinion on, professors included. Evidently, mathematicians did not share this sentiment.

He’d never been in the math building before, but he’d envisioned it decorated with impersonal austerity. Maybe flashy, renovated black and white minimalist décor with cold metal accents every bit as rigid and inflexible as these people seemed to be. It wasn’t.

Everything looked older than the dirt it was built on and the corridors had a musty library-book smell. He walked past a study area with worn-out wooden tables parked with mismatched ladder back chairs. Some Greek nonsense was scribbled hastily in several different sets of handwriting on an enormous chalkboard between tight-packed bookshelves.

Atem parsed the room numbers, not missing the stray chalk-dust finger prints decorating every door. He heard a muffled voice at the end of the hall and strode in, unperturbed that the class had begun without him.

“I assumed you’d know better than to show up to my class late by now, _Yugi_ , but I suppose you truly are nothing but an incorrigible fool.”

Atem felt his blood boil at the comment, both at being confused for his double and on behalf of his brother for the insult. He fought the urge to snap back and looked up to meet an equally livid set of piercing blue eyes.

_Oh no._

“Nice try, but you’ve caught the evil doppelganger today.”

_Oh, gods, c_ _ould_ _the fates truly be so cruel?_

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Yugi.”

_No. There was no way he deserved this torture._

“Wrong twin, asshole.”

_Yugi_ _had_ _omitted_ _one critical detail in all his descriptions._

“Don’t think I’m as gullible as those dweebs you call friends. Don’t you know who I am, or do you need a reminder?”

_Kaiba was young._

“Clearly, the problem is that _you_ don’t know who _I_ am. Atem Mutou. Check the roster.”

_And Kaiba was hot._

The name must have registered with him, and Atem tossed out a cocky grin. On the inside, he felt dunked in ice water as Kaiba’s narrowed glare raked him over from tip to tail, assessing the subtle differences between himself and Yugi. Taller posture. Tan skin from his semester abroad. Angular eyes, less violet and more red. Kaiba conceded.

“Your little detour has already cost us six minutes which is $750 dollars of tuition between 25 people, and more importantly, six minutes of my life I will never get back so let’s move on and pretend this nonsense never happened.”

Atem watched Kaiba stalk back to the board before scanning the room for a seat. As it always happens when one is late on the first day, the only open chair left was front and center. Marvelous. A copy of what he assumed was the syllabus that had already been handed out was on the desk. All that was written was the title of the course and an excessively long listing of academic articles.

“I presume many of you were thrilled to see no textbook requirement for my class, and I will be equally pleased to disappoint you with some bad news. This is a reading class. If you do not do the readings, you will fail.”

Kaiba picked up a piece of white chalk that matched his skin tone and raked the edge down the board over and over with a series of pleasant skritching sounds. Satisfied with the point he’d worn in the surface, he began to write.

“Homework will be worth 10% of your grade. If you are late to class, you receive no credit. If you do not support your answers with well-written proofs in complete, English sentences, you receive no credit. Make no mistake, it may be worth only 10%, but if you do not finish and understand the homework, you will fail.”

Atem was growing more confused by the minute. This was a math class. Last time he took math, which he would be the first to admit was the algebra class he flunked junior year of high school, he recalled virtually zero reading and even less essay writing. Only a vast sea of meaningless letters and numbers and other hieroglyphs.

“Cheating of any kind, most notably plagiarism, will not be tolerated. Do not attempt to do so. I assure you, I will know. Not only will you fail, but you will be thrown out of this University so fast your head will spin.”

Atem had his notebook and pen out on the desk, but was too enamored with watching Kaiba’s pale, manicured fingers contrasted against the blackboard to write anything down.

“I hold office hours at 6 AM on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. If you losers can’t wake up that early, I suggest you become intimately acquainted with stack exchange. I do not entertain questions over email.”

Atem withheld a groan. As if class at 8 AM wasn’t enough. This guy had no concept of too fucking early.

“I enforce a dress code. If you can’t muster up enough maturity and self-respect to show up in something more professional than pajamas, then you can leave my classroom.”

Fine, fair enough. Kaiba himself was certainly a sight for sore eyes. He was dressed in the ubiquitous twenty-first century academic smart casual uniform but bore every mark of crippling detail-oriented neurosis. The sleeves of his classic blue oxford weren’t haphazardly shoved up over his elbows, but folded with calculated precision. The shirt must be professionally tailored, and tapered just right at the waist to allow for no awkward pooling over the belt. Even the legs of his dark-wash denim broke with proper measure on his scuffless brown boots. No single hair on his sleek sable head looked out of place.

“These are my ground rules. You will find they are quite strict. Do not attempt to bend them, or you will be broken.”

Atem wanted to kick himself for thinking the last part sounded oddly alluring. No. Absolutely not. All signs pointed to Kaiba being a contemptible control freak at best and a possible sociopath who mistreated Yugi at worst. Also his professor. Also probably straight.

“We will skip introductions, frankly I don’t care to learn your names. Half of you will drop this class before February. Those of you stubborn enough to stay are unlikely to leave an impression.”

“Most of you are physics majors. I possess a vehement loathing of physicists. You probably think this will be an easy A. You’d be wrong. There will be no magic formulas, no arithmetic, no experimentally derived close-is-close-enough answers, and no fucking integrals to take. May god have mercy on your souls.”

Atem couldn’t mask his small chuckle. Historically speaking, philosophers tend to have a bone to pick with physicists on principle as well, or anyone else close-minded enough to think they have all the answers.

“Many of you are pre-meds. Your flashcards and highlighters and copy-cat wrote memorization will be useless to you here. You’ll have to think for yourself for the first time in your short-lived careers. No, I will not give you a gentleman’s A for your med school application. No, I will not write you a recommendation. No, you are not as smart as you think you are.”

Atem thought perhaps he caught the faint beginnings of a smile on Kaiba’s face before what he said next.

“One of you thinks himself a philosopher. Perhaps you will find yourself pleasantly well prepared for an elegant and rewarding challenge. Do not disappoint. I will endeavor to do the same.”

Kaiba intense and indecipherable gaze caught Atem’s for a fleeting moment before flickering away.

“This classroom is an even playing field. If you have a disdain for arithmetic and frivolous number-crunching, rest assured there will be very little calculation in this class. All that is required to succeed is a pen, fingers to count on, and a brain. All of you have the former. It’s doubtful any of you possess the latter.”

“Now,” Kaiba drew the eraser over the edge of the board, being careful not to coat his dark pants in the flurry of chalk dust before wiping the board clean. “In case any of you were feeling less than motivated this class involves an element of competition. Each day will begin with a question, the first to answer correctly and explain their line of thinkingused to reach the solution gets extra credit points. Consider this a very attractive and generous offer.”

Atem felt his attitude perk up a bit. He loved a good challenge, and had no intentions of losing. Kaiba wrote a question on the board.

_Sum_ _every number_ _from_ _0_ _to_ _100._

“Begin.”

Wait, didn’t he just say there wouldn’t be any calculating? This felt an awful lot like calculating. And an awful lot like a useless waste of time. Atem heard a smattering of clicking from around the room. Great, he didn’t even _own_ a calculator, and it wasn’t on the list of required supplies.

“NO FUCKING CALCULATORS!!!”

Atem jumped at the sound of a very expensive graphing calculator being thrown unceremoniously down the hall. The other students slipped theirs back in their bags.

Okay. No calculators.

Kaiba can’t possibly mean to wait around and watch them adding up figures for the rest of class. Although maybe this was some sick life lesson in the tedium of math and the discipline required to practice it? Well, if this was some bizarre sort of mind game then Atem simply resolved to cheat it.

There was no way he was going to do all that work, there was certainly a lazy way out… He started writing. Maybe there was an easier order to add them up in, instead of starting with 1?

“One, two, skip a few, ninety-nine, one-hundred.” He muttered the rhyme to himself, scribbling just that.

0, 1, 2, … 98, 99, 100

Wait.

0 + 100 = 100

and then…

99 + 1 = 100

and also

98 + 2 = 100

And you could make pairs like that all the way to 50… Well, except for 50 itself since that would be 50 + 50 = 100 and you can’t count 50 twice.

So that meant you got 100 fifty times and 50 once.

(100 x 50) + 50 = 5050

Well “from 0 to 100” is a little ambiguous. Did that mean include 100? Kaiba did seem like a stickler for details. Atem decided to give 4950 as an answer too, just to be safe.

“5050.” Atem was the first to answer. “Or… 4950.”

“Which is it?” Kaiba looked unamused.

“5050 with 100 included, 4950 without. The phrasing of the question was ambiguous.”

Kaiba nodded. “An important lesson in the precision of language. Let’s go with 0 to 100, inclusive.” He handed Atem the chalk. “Explain.”

Atem allowed himself a haughty smirk, feeling pleased that he’d cheated Kaiba’s game. He wrote his little trick on the board. A few members of the class gave a groan of realization, but Kaiba didn’t look even remotely shocked. Atem realized he might have been the one who got played.

“That’s correct.” Kaiba said flatly. “The next one will be harder.” He erased the board and Atem sat back down, feeling a bit vexed at the lack of recognition. He thought his answer was rather sly.

“Our first lesson will be on the topic and Ancient Babylonian and Egyptian mathematics. I will enjoy nothing more than showing you how a bunch of barely literate farmers in the 4th millennium BCE still knew more about numbers than you do.”

Kaiba jumped right into a lecture. On the first day. It would be a long semester.

* * *

A/N: The problem in this chapter is based on a famous anecdote from the life of absolute mathematical madman Carl Friedrich Gauss. As a young boy, much to the chagrin of his math teacher who had set the class a busywork task of summing the numbers from 0 to 100, immediately handed in his paper. Once the rest of the class had completed the task, only Gauss' paper contained the correct answer of 5050! The solution Atem gives is Gauss's solution, and the one Kaiba is hoping to receive.


	2. Sieve If You Can Beat Me

“It’s an office not a bedroom, Kaiba-boy.”

“Shut up, Pegasus, I’m working. Something you’ve clearly forgotten how to do.”

Kaiba didn’t humor the silver-haired snake leaning in the door jam with a cursory glance. His PhD advisor was a rare sight in the department at midnight, and notoriously absent during daylight hours as well.

Pegasus was an unfortunate thorn in his side that couldn’t be pried out. It was undeniable that the man’s mathematical creativity was limitless in his prime, and he’d practically reinvented the field of symplectic topology, Kaiba’s specialty, which is why he ended up at Domino University to begin with. But Pegasus was over the hill, rarely publishing any novel work between all his seminars and wine swilling and was little more than an aggravating fly buzzing around the department with his brassy flamboyance.

Kaiba was infuriated that all his great successes and innovations would always be tarnished by being built on the sandcastles of this pompous wind bag.

“Have you never heard the expression ‘sleep on it’ or have you simply refused to take it to heart?” Pegasus had a unique obsession with swatting the hornets nest.

“I’ll sleep when I’m finished.” Kaiba’s jaw stiffened but his eyes remained trained on the chalkboard.

“How many months have you been stuck on this proof? Six? I know how you feel about the word _collaboration_ but at least consider that it might be time for a new perspective. Have a glass of wine and relax. Take some time off and go someplace exotic, meet a nice girl. I’ve always been a believer in finding a _muse_ \--”

“Are you done yet?”

“I’m your _advisor_ , Kaiba-boy, it’s my job to _advise_. What you do with my wisdom is your choice.”

“If I had a dime for every time you gave me shitty advice, I wouldn’t be a broke grad student anymore.”

“The youth have no respect for their elders these days.” Pegasus laughed. “You’re never any fun, I’ll leave you to your brooding.”

Pegasus shut the door and Kaiba was alone with his thoughts once again. Time gradually slipped away and the distant sounds of the first chipping swallows of dawn wandered in through the open window.

He looked at his watch. 4:37 AM. He gave a heavy sigh. Another day of no progress. At least there was time to go home and shower before he had to be back for his office hours and another morning of teaching.

Kaiba had a deeply seated disdain for teaching, but it was a necessary evil. He supposed he could learn to tolerate reciting the same Calculus I lecture on loop every semester for 30 years if it meant the remaining hours of his day could be devoted to his work. That was the agreed upon exchange for a professor in a “useless” field. Teach calculus to the University’s cash cow: the endless gaggle of wannnabe engineers and in exchange they sign the check for some paltry salary and enable the pursuit of those fantastical, elegant abstractions with no practical applications.

The landscape of academia was shifting, and money rotating to become the central fixation. A tenure track position for someone working outside applied math was a rare and priceless gem these days. So Kaiba taught every class they would let him, just to build his resume. At least this semester, he was given the chance to teach his own class on something he was genuinely passionate about, on the condition he still taught two sections of calculus on top of that. And worked on his thesis.

Kaiba erased the chalkboard in frustration, and slammed the office door shut behind him.

* * *

Atem was beginning to grow exasperated with the trivialities. He checked his phone again. 8:30 PM. He drummed his fingers on the arm of his wing back throne, struggling to stay focused on what the brothers were squabbling over. It was getting late for a Tuesday, and he had been too busy directing the planning for this weekend’s mixer to start Kaiba’s homework yet.

The first weekend of the semester was a critical game piece in any university’s social scene and Delta Tau Chi needed a quality gambit to maintain their reputation as the hottest place to be on Domino campus every Saturday night. Atem had spent his three years as president transfiguring this fraternity from some low-minded uncultured sleaze shack to the posh party palace it was today, and he would be damned if these men could not maintain his expected level of panache through the end of his senior year.

So Atem assembled his executive council and they schemed and budgeted for the first round of debauchery this semester.

“For the last time, Seth, quit ordering us around like you’re the president when you’re not!”

“I’m still the vice-president, Mahad, and I outrank you so I get the final say!”

Atem wasn’t sure what they were even arguing about anymore, but it probably didn’t matter. Seth and Mahad fought about everything. Just like Seth and Shada. Or Seth and Karim. Or Seth and Atem. He was certain Seth argued with Seth pretty frequently in the shower. Atem wondered who won.

“I know we’re all partial to saving money but frankly natty light is the pinnacle of piss water. Shada for the love of god find it in the budget to splurge on a full body domestic draft, I don’t care which one. Mahad, text Mana and ask her what the Delta Nu’s drink, buy them whatever they ask for. I want intelligent women at this event and in the future so don’t burn this bridge by being cheap.” Atem silenced the room with his domineering aura. He stood up, straightened his clothes and gave a sigh.

“It loathes me to do you the pleasure but Seth I’m leaving you in charge. I have other work to do and once you delinquents get into it you’ll be up all night. I expect you to have the details hashed out and sent to me by the morning.”

Seth gave a self satisfied smirk and Mahad let out a groan. The King of Chis picked up his coat and strode out to meet his twin at the library.

* * *

Over the years of studying together Atem had grown to find the sound of Yugi’s fingers clicking in time over his keyboard a comforting sort of white noise. Every now and again he’d growl at the screen when his code wouldn’t compile, or chew thoughtfully on the back of his pen as he mulled over a sticky bug. All in all, he was a very agreeable library companion.

Yugi closed his screen and gave a lethargic stretch of his arms coupled with a deep yawn.

“Finished already, Aibou?”

“Already? Atem, they’re about to close the library. What number are you on?”

The tanner twin looked at the stacks of scratch paper encircling his position at the table. He might be winning his battle with the current problem but definitely losing the war.

“Two.”

“Two?!”

“Well there’s only five questions. Five really difficult questions.”

Yugi laughed.

“Is this where I get to say I told you so? Because I told you so.” Yugi’s sweet nature didn’t let him gloat for long. “Atem, maybe you should cut your losses and get to sleep. You’ve been burning the candle at both ends already and the semester just started. I know you think everyone needs you, but they want you at your best! Think of turning it in half finished not as a loss but as a… tactical retreat.”

“I will not lose a battle of wits on the opening move.”

Yugi sighed. The librarians were locking the doors.

“Well, if you’re going to be up all night in the room I’ll go stay over with Anzu.”

Atem smiled. Yugi always looked for a good excuse to spend the night, even though Anzu would never turn him away if he asked. He suspected it might be that Yugi was a people-pleaser at heart and felt bad leaving his twin alone more nights than not.

“Okay, Aibou, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Don’t stay up all night!”

Yugi threw him a casual wave before setting out. Atem checked his wallet to see if he had enough cash to stop for a cup of coffee on his walk home.

Atem sipped his latte and sat on the sofa to work. He couldn’t hear the sounds of Jou, Honda, and Otoogi playing video games on the floor above, a clear sign that it was far too late to still be awake. He steeled himself to have another look at Kaiba’s problem set. He had 3 problems left, and they all were equally confusing. Kaiba had a strange gift for concocting questions that were deceptively simple on the surface until you tried to solve them. Atem picked one at random.

_5\. List_ _every_ _prime number_ _between_ _0_ _and_ _500_ _._ _SHOW YOUR WORK!_

Okay, clearly that was to stop people from looking it up. And 1 was definitely not included in the answer, because it wasn’t prime. Kaiba had deliberately chosen 0 as the starting point to trip up anyone who didn’t pay attention in class.

So where to go from there? Atem didn’t have a good guess as to how many there would be, and wasn’t sure if that was a helpful question to ask anyway.

He figured you could exclude any even number or any number ending in 0 or 5 since they were obviously not contenders. Atem felt like it was easier to think about what wasn’t included than what was. Well, he could solve by process of elimination then. After all, every number was either a multiple of something less than itself, or it was prime.

Atem listed every number from 0 to 500 in a grid and crossed out 0 and 1. He circled 2, the first prime number, then crossed out all of it’s multiples. That reduced the remaining possibilities by half, which was a good feeling. He circled 3, then crossed out all _its_ multiples. Maybe there was a faster way to do this, but this was very systematic and would certainly guarantee the right answer.

When he finished, Atem had 95 numbers circled. He was glad Kaiba had shown mercy and stopped at 500. He noticed most the numbers came at the beginning, and got less frequent towards the end. Yugi had mentioned before that very large prime numbers were used in computer encryption, and that anyone who could write a good program for finding new ones would be an instant billionaire. He once set out to try, and blue screened his computer. Atem thought maybe he appreciated what Kaiba was getting at with the exercise.

Three down, two to go. An already long night was about to get even longer.

Atem noticed the sky out his window shifting from an inky black to a slate purple-grey and checked the time on his phone. 4:37 AM. Even his nocturnal companion, Bast, was sleeping soundly. He considered scratching her ears, but thought it rude to wake the cat.

He’d managed to square away Kaiba’s assignment, save for a minor issue on question three, but at what cost? He rubbed his neck and felt the stiff muscles shifting under the touch. He stared longingly at his bed and thought of going to sleep for two hours, but the nap would probably just leave him groggy and wanting. Besides, he knew that Kaiba expected perfection and would mark the question wrong if he failed to iron out the last kinks. He was awake anyhow. Might as well shower and go to his office hours, he could always sleep after class.

Atem arrived at 6:05 AM and found the tiny plaque that read “Seto Kaiba” in the narrow office hall. Several of the doors had cheesy, colorful math posters taped to the front, or were peppered with jokes and comics. The corkboard on Kaiba’s door was simply adorned with a collection of journal articles thumb tacked into the surface. The titles were Greek to Atem, but he didn’t miss Kaiba’s name in the author line on all of them.

Atem rapped his knuckles or the door, but there was no answer. He did say Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays right?

He heard the distant fumbling of a set of keys and Kaiba’s long figure turned the corner at the end of the hall. His blue eyes grew wide as saucers when Kaiba saw him waiting at his door and Atem realized he’d caught him off guard. His hair was still damp and tousled and his bleary eyes suggested he’d likely slept about as much as Atem.

_I_ _bet no one has actually shown up before..._ Atem thought ruefully.

He felt like the cat who caught the canary watching Kaiba march down the hall and click free the lock.

“You’re late.”

“We’re even.”

The door creaked open and Atem followed Kaiba inside, shutting the door behind them. He wasn’t quite sure what he expected, but the office was an intimate shoebox hardly big enough for the centerpiece, a worn out walnut desk.

Two exceptional mid-century wood-and-leather occasional chairs were locked in an unspoken duel, staring each other down from opposite sides of the desk. They had a certain retro appeal that made them almost trendy again, but the wear suggested they had lived in this office generations before Kaiba had.

On the left, an empty chalkboard stretched the full length of the wall and on the right the built in shelves were packed to bursting with a variegated flock of books, not just about math, and a collection of board games that rivaled the Kame Game shop. On the topmost shelf were a few empty bottles of veuve clicquot champagne. In the corner under a tiny window without a view, was a kettle, one mug, and a pour over coffee maker that Atem assumed was responsible for the pervasive aroma. He searched the room for any personal affects but there was only one: a photo of a younger Kaiba with an even younger black-haired boy that looked like it was taken by the ocean. The picture sat on a shelf among the board games.

Kaiba plopped himself in the far chair, but his posture didn’t grow any less cold and rigid.

“Put your question on the board.”

Atem made no sudden movements under Kaiba’s hawk-eyed stare. He picked up a fresh piece of chalk, a fancy Japanese brand with the name _Hagoromo_ * printed on the side. It had a definitive heft, and felt smoother and vaguely more mature than what he’d experienced in primary school. Atem ran the stick down the board with a sound like he’d released the souls of the damned.

“You’re ruining my chalk!” Kaiba snapped.

Atem felt his body temperature spike ten degrees when the blue-eyed monster wrapped his pale, icy fingers around his to snatch the stick away. He watched Kaiba rake the edge over the board again like he had in class, mumbling something about wasting a precious, limited resource on such an idiot. Apparently satisfied, he handed the chalk back to Atem, careful not to let their hands brush a second time.

“Use the _flat_ edge.” He growled.

Atem nodded in assent and wrote question three on the board with crooked, unpracticed handwriting. Kaiba’s was always straight, neat, and fluid. He made it look effortless. He was sure to include all the work he’d already done before getting to the part that tripped him up.

Kaiba looked to be considering something before answering with more questions.

“Do you recall the definition for that?”  
“Any new hypotheses?”  
“I see. And can you think of any proofs we did in class with a strategy that could apply here?”  
“What other special cases can you think of? Any trivial ones?”  
“Could you induct on that argument?”

It was all very Socratic, Kaiba never gave anything away for free but preferred dragging him by his toenails to see something he’d already known for himself all along. When he was finished, his original proof was replaced by a far more air-tight inductive argument. He copied it down on his homework.

“Thanks for your help. Here.” He offered the finished copy to Kaiba.

“Keep it til 8. When you’re late, I’ll have a chance to throw it in the trash.”

“Bold of you to assume, Professor 6:05”

Atem’s little quip earned him and glare and crossed arms. He checked his phone. It was now 6:45, just over an hour before class time. Maybe he’d stop in the dining hall for breakfast for the first time since freshman year. To his surprise, Kaiba spoke up again.

“Have time for a game?”

Atem looked up, baffled as to why Kaiba wasn’t chasing him out of his office at the first possible opportunity. But Atem, growing up with his twin in his grandfather’s old game shop, was the king of games. Judging by the fat stacks on the shelves of the office, it looked like Kaiba had a healthy respect for a good romp on the board and might prove a worthy challenger…

“What sort of game did you have in mind?” Atem lowered himself into the chair opposite Kaiba.

“A mathematical strategy game.” Kaiba plucked a Go box off the self but set the board aside and only kept the marbles. He counted out 97 black marbles and 20 white and placed them in two piles.

“The rules are simple. You win if you are the first to clear a pile. You can only remove marbles from the larger pile. You can only remove a certain number of marbles each turn. The number you remove has to be a multiple of the smaller pile. For example, if the white pile has 5 marbles, I can remove 5, 10, 15 or so on from the black pile.”

“That’s it?”

Kaiba nodded. Atem looked thoughtfully at the piles and decided to let Kaiba go first, to see what strategy he employed. He took 80 marbles from the black pile, leaving 17.

Atem’s turn. He took 17 from white, the only move Kaiba left him, leaving 3. Atem could already feel himself backed him into a corner.

Kaiba’s turn. He took 15 from black, leaving 2.

Atem plucked 2 from white. Kaiba took both black marbles remaining, and the victory.

“Just learning the rules…” Atem grumbled, beside himself at being beaten at any game.

“Again then?” Kaiba smirked. He put two handfuls of random size on the table.

This time, Atem decided to take the initiative since it seemed to be critical for victory the first time. Kaiba won again.

Round three. Atem. Kaiba. Atem. Kaiba. Atem. Kaiba. Atem. Kaiba… another loss.

They played five times. Atem lost all five. Lost? Lost! He _never_ lost a game! There was trick, Kaiba knew it and he didn’t, and he was going to figure it out immediately or it would torture him until he did.

“I’ve had better challenges playing solitaire.” Kaiba goaded. Atem slammed the office door as he left.

“AAAIIBBOOUUU!!!” Atem yelled into the phone. Yugi was still at Anzu’s but could hear him tearing through the shelves in their room clearly looking for something. It better be important. Yugi groaned.

“Atem, just because you have to be up early for class doesn’t mean you have to call me and wake me up too…”

“Where is the marble collection from the game shop?”

“What? Atem, It’s not even 8 AM why are you looking for that? Did you even sleep?”

“It’s important. Critical. I have to find it so I can _win_.”

“That doesn’t sound like an emergency to me. What are you talking about, winning? Winning a game? What game? Ugh, you know what, I probably don’t need to know.”

“I lost a game to Kaiba at his office hours, now I have to practice so I can beat him.”

“You?? Lost a game of marbles? Be still my beating heart how ever shall we go on?” Yugi’s sarcasm dripped through the phone.

“Aibou…”

“Okay, fine, ummm… I think I remember putting them in the dark magician tin on the third shelf so they wouldn’t roll around? I don’t know, we don’t use them a lot. Anyway, I’m hanging up. I don’t want to wake Anzu.” Click.

Yugi was right, there was a huge collection of marbles in the box. Atem had 20 minutes to ponder the puzzle of Kaiba’s game until he would have to leave for class because he wasn’t going to be late after staying up all night to finish the homework.

He dumped two handfuls on the floor and started manipulating the piles, measuring the moves. He played over and over, until it became clear that there was always a minimum number of moves required to win. If it was an odd number, who ever moved first would win, and if it was an even number, the second player would win. Then how did Kaiba win every time? Atem realized that the maximum number of moves could be manipulated, to swing the game in favor of one player. If Kaiba had the losing draw, he could force the game by adding in an extra move… But that meant he had to know how many moves were required to win right from the start. How did he do that?

Atem considered how the number of marbles in the last pile cleared was the biggest number that could evenly divide both the original pile sizes. If Kaiba knew this, he could easily reason how many moves he’d need to win. Bingo. Finally satisfied with finding the solution, he left for class.

Atem was the last one to arrive, but he wasn’t late. He took the last seat again, front and center, which was at risk of permanently becoming “his” seat if he didn’t show up earlier next time. Kaiba’s hair was no longer disheveled, but the dark circles under his eyes remained. When everyone was settled, he started writing the day’s question on the board without a word.

_Find the greatest common divisor of 1220 and 516._

That’s… That’s it? That’s just the marble game, but on paper and with really big marble piles. Kaiba was testing _him_ , specifically, to see if he was smart enough to solve it in under an hour or if he cared enough to even try. He wouldn’t disappoint.

“Four.” Atem answered. He wrote down the “turns” of the marble game as numbers on the board for the explanation.

“That’s correct.” Kaiba looked subtly more pleased than he did after the first day’s problem.

“Ugh, are you gonna get it every time…” Some dorky looking pig-tailed blonde grumbled from the second row

“Don’t blame other people for your own stupidity, Hawkins.” Kaiba said. He erased the board and started writing the day’s lesson.

“Today we’ll be talking about algorithms, and why you should care.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: “Hagoromo” is an obscure yet iconic Japanese chalk brand that is a ubiquitous staple of traditionalist mathematicians everywhere. As a rule, mathematicians NEVER use whiteboards (I mean, maybe some young west coast punks do but you’d be laughed out of my bougie ass old guard department) Believe me when I say professors were buying up cases of this shit when Hagoromo went out of business. You can read about how other mathletes handled the news of this tragedy [here](https://gizmodo.com/why-mathematicians-are-hoarding-this-special-type-of-ja-1711008881).
> 
> “There have been rumors about a dream chalk, a chalk so powerful that mathematics practically writes itself; a chalk so amazing that no incorrect proof can be written using this chalk. I can finally say, after months of pursuit, that such a chalk indeed exists.” - Satyan Devadoss, math professor at Williams College, on Hagoromo chalk
> 
> Also, this chapter’s bonus problem is [The Euclidean Algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_algorithm). You can read about Kaiba’s marble game (Euclid’s Game) which can be won every time if you know the algorithm [here](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3612461?origin=crossref).
> 
> Atem’s homework problem is another ancient algorithm, [The Sieve of Eratosthenes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sieve_of_Eratosthenes), one of the more efficient prime number sieves for small value primes devised before modern cryptography and computing.


	3. It's All Greek to Me

“You know who’s looking _fine_ tonight? Seth.”

“Oh my god, Atem, you did not just say that!”

“What? He’s a good kisser.”

“He’s our cousin!” Yugi cried. He was almost certain it was a joke, but with his evil twin you could never be too sure.

There was truth in it, though. Seth did look rather dashing in his reluctant angel costume beside his girlfriend, Kisara. Her flowing platinum locks rendered her every bit the sexy seraphim herself. Anyone who knew her well would have found the outfit at odds with her brash, aggressive nature but that was part of the charm. She was the only one with enough attitude to match Seth step for step. It was nice having her around to keep him occupied, even if she could only come into town on the weekends.

The lively bubble gum pop of ‘heaven’ just barely managed to drown out the blaring metal power chords of ‘hell’ coming up from the downstairs of the house. The opening weekend party theme had been a subject of extensive debate, but everyone was partial to the classics.

Of course all the brothers had wanted to be demons, but Atem insisted that no, you could not have a ‘Heaven & Hell’ party with no angels. Yes, you could still get laid in an angel costume. Yes, some of them would inevitably need to take one for the team. To hold off an all-out brawl they’d decided to draw straws.

Atem used presidential privilege to give himself and Yugi a get out of jail free, as the good-twin-bad-twin dynamic was too classic to pass up, he asserted. Naturally, he was the demon.

Seth pretended to be mad at Mahad for drawing demon when he got angel, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. Kisara would be picking for them regardless. Jou and Honda both were stuck with angel, and embraced the cherubic vibe wholeheartedly. Otoogi, always committed to the theme, went all in on his oni look.

Atem and his twin walked out on the porch to hunt for Anzu, who had an aversion to loud music, but caught Mai instead. She’d bent the theme with her own imagination to come as the not-so-virgin-mary, and it was every bit as creative as it was slutty.

“Well hey there, pharaoh, on the hunt for your next _shadow game_ victim this evening?” She was double-fisting two lurid blue cocktails, one of which he hoped was for Jou, but you never knew with Mai. The title ‘pharaoh’ had been used so much since his study abroad that it had become a permanent fixture around the fraternity.

“How many times do I have to tell you not to encourage him!” The saintly twin turned beet red and buried his face in his hands.

“Aww, Yugi, don’t be such a puritan. I for one embrace your better half’s… sexual liberation.” She threw him a gratuitous wink.

“You aren’t his roommate…” Yugi groaned.

“Oh, Aibou, don’t pretend like you’re home enough to notice these days.” Atem teased, and his brother’s embarrassment spilled over onto his ears.

“I wasn’t aware there were any innocents left for you to corrupt on this campus,” Mai took a long, seductive sip of her drink, making eyes at what was likely one brown-eyed puppy from across the room.

“Chasing virgins is weird, Atem, you shouldn’t do that!” Yugi said.

“Don’t accuse me of objectifying something as senseless as virginity!” He was talking in his presidential voice now. “I don’t _chase virgins_ , I simply enjoy indulging men in their first male experience.” His eyes grew dark and mischievous. “They’ve all waited long enough to admit it to themselves, I’d hate for the adventure to culminate in disappointment, and I certainly never disappoint.”

Mai couldn’t resist and burst out laughing at Yugi’s disgusted face. This is what their little band had taken to calling Atem’s shadow games. It was something about the president and his own ‘know thyself’ life mantra and captivating emotional intelligence that could make even the most self-conscious, guarded people spill their deepest thoughts—and deepest desires—right into his lap. After a long philosophical conversation with Atem, anyone could find themselves pouring out secrets they didn’t even know they were keeping from themselves, including unexplored sexuality. And the pharaoh in him ate it up.

The jokes subsided with the arrival of Anzu and Shizuka, glued to either arm of Atem’s ever excitable sorority counterpart, Mana. Jou had tried to keep his innocent freshman sister free of the wolfpack’s clutches, but that was before she was clicked in place to complete the bubbly Delta Nu friendship triumvirate.

“I hope we didn’t miss anything!” Anzu beamed at the first sight of Yugi, who assured her the night was still young.

It was harder to occupy the attention of the middle angel, however, who instantly locked onto a dark, towering figure from across the porch.

“~Mahaaad-oo~!” Mana sing-songed before floating off to cajole Atem’s stoic social chair into more revelry than he was accustomed to, as was her flirtatious habit. _I invited them over, she’s just being polite_ he always insisted to Atem after the fact.

Yugi’s words rang true; the night was indeed young and every cup in the house runneth over to the rhythm of this season’s top electronic bops. The pharaoh mingled the floor endlessly, chatting with friends old and new about his travels in Egypt last semester, never anything less than the center of attention.

But where the end of the evening usually found him bedding another willing victim of his wiles, tonight the music wound down and the bodies emptied out of the house and Atem found himself on the deck gazing out at the lake over a night cap. The party was a smash, but the vague sense of ennui bubbled up in his throat out of nowhere. He swallowed the feeling whole, too tired to confront its meaning tonight, and wandered downstairs to the president’s suite alone.

* * *

Saturday nights were the hardest since Mokuba left for college, but Kaiba would hardly admit that except in the quiet of his own mind. Music inevitability filtered in from the frat houses across the street but he hadn’t realized how much the distant bass would irk him when he’d downsized to the one-bed one-bath apartment back in August. He realized rather quickly why the rent was so affordable.

Kaiba scrolled through his RSS feed for this week’s pre-issue of Annals of Mathematics and his tags from The Arxiv, but nothing peaked his interest. It seemed his European rivals, Dartz and Von Schroeder and colleagues, were having as much of a dry spell as he was. Kaiba gave a listless sigh, feeling too uninspired to turn back to his own problems. He poured a stiff cup of gin and vermouth, dropping in three olives. An odd number, for good luck. Fuck luck.

All he wanted in reality was to call his brother, but felt too embarrassed to bother him on a night when any socially well-adapted individual would be out on the town. He wished that Mokuba had decided to go to Domino University, but he understood why he hadn’t. He needed to be his own person, free of the shadow of his ‘genius’ older brother. Brilliance was a relative feat.

Kaiba pulled open his laptop once again and resolved to at least try a call. Maybe Mokuba would stay in tonight. The video chat rang once, twice, three times…

“Seto!!” Mokuba’s vibrant face filled the frame with his big horn-rimmed glasses and dark hair pulled back from his face in a half-bun. His younger brother had grown up a lot, but somehow Kaiba still always expected the thirteen year old version to answer and was perpetually surprised when he did not.

“Mokuba! It’s Saturday night, why are you online?”

“It’s still a little cold out, I wasn’t in the mood to spend time walking around. Plus, you couldn’t have missed the Square Enix release this week did you? I’m a sucker for anything from their studio, and I’m not gonna let the story be spoiled before I can play for myself.”

“Cold weather? In California? Sounds like you’re going soft.”

Mokuba laughed and Kaiba heard the classic RPG idle music playing on loop in the background over the line.

“Everything’s relative, Seto. I didn’t pack more than a thin sweater.” Mokuba turned his face back to the screen, and Kaiba heard button mashing and synthetic death cries from Mokuba’s game. Kaiba knew he didn’t pack hardly anything thick for his west coast adventure. All his winter clothes were still in boxes in the apartment attic.

“Any good?” Kaiba asked, not all that interested but fishing to keep their conversation going.

“The game? Well… It’s okay. Still think you and I could cook up something better if we tried.”

Kaiba laughed. His brother was always trying to get him to work on a joint project, but Mokuba was a lot more down to earth than he was. Applied problems, applied solutions. Kaiba always promised to try anyway. For Mokuba’s sake.

“Sure. Okay.”

The amicable silence settled between them in a way that never felt out of place with his younger brother. Most days, he just missed having him there. Kaiba felt himself marooned on an island after their parents died, but never realized how lonely that island could be until Mokuba sailed away. The screen light tinted his brother’s face slightly blue, and for a minute Kaiba just watched his excited expressions as he progressed through the next scene of the fantasy story.

“How’s work going?” Mokuba broke the silence. His voice was casual, but Kaiba could tell from the way he didn’t look back at the camera he was asking out of genuine worry.

“Ugh, don’t even ask… I was trying to expand on Stromquist’s old result again, you know the one, where he proves the weaker condition that every locally monotone plane simple curve can admit an inscribed square. I mean the way he defines the neighborhood around _p_ so you get no parallel chords defined is pretty sharp. But it just really can’t extend to the concept of cusps, the quotient map just falls apart when you project back onto the curve...”

He knew he might as well be speaking Chinese because Mokuba didn’t understand a single word he was saying, but he was always a good sport about listening.

“Well, it sounds like a promising idea at least. Maybe it just needs a few edits?”

“No, the problem is in the foundation of the argument, it just doesn’t become obvious until the end. I’ll have to start over with a completely different framework.” Kaiba flopped himself down on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling.

“Weren’t you the one who told me we learn more getting a shitty answer with sound logic than a sound answer with shitty logic?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

He heard the music on Mokuba’s game mute and the incessant clicking of the buttons subsided.

“Hey Seto?”

He didn’t reply. He knew his little brother was about to play big brother and say something he didn’t care to hear.

“Have you thought about maybe getting a roommate?” The tone suggested he knew he was walking on eggshells.

“I can afford this apartment just fine, Mokuba.”

“No, I mean for… well, at least try a cat.”

* * *

It wasn’t until three on Sunday afternoon that Atem was feeling sound enough of mind and stomach to roll out of bed and meet up with his friends for some hangover food. He pulled on his favorite black leather boots that were more shoe polish than leather anymore along with both a sweatshirt and a jacket to stave off the lingering winter chill.

As they’d all grown up, their classic staple _Burger World_ was gradually replaced by the hardly more mature _Nat 20!_ the tabletop-game themed craft brewery where they’d first met Otoogi. Mai and Anzu were still waiting tables part time for extra cash.

Atem was too exhausted to bother fixing his hair and eyeliner, and the little pub restaurant was hardly a formal enough atmosphere for anyone to care. Maybe he’d order a hair of the dog, but most likely just a heaping platter of french fries. Most likely that’s all his stomach could hold down.

The short jaunt in the sunlight very nearly killed him, and he lowered himself into his assigned seat at their usual booth with a melodramatic moan.

“Glad I didn’t dare disturb your tomb this morning, pharaoh.”  
“Yeah, you look out of practice. They not know how to party in Egypt or somethin?”

“Ha ha very funny, I’m surprised to see you two desperados got out of bed at all,” He quipped back at Jou and Honda before cracking his back. “Time is an anathema, boys, I fear I’m growing old.”

“We’re twenty-two!” Yugi teased, the well-behaved twin looking no worse for the wear after the night out. He and Anzu likely called it early so she wouldn’t be tired for today’s shift.

“I’m an old soul, Aibou.”

Normally, Atem loved Anzu’s happy attitude, but when she came around to take the table’s order it did nothing but exacerbate his splitting headache. He decided to order a light beer as a tonic along with his fries after all. He had gotten extraordinarily lucky with Kaiba’s homework assignment this weekend, and he was feeling grateful for that fact now more than ever. He wouldn’t be able to think straight for a large part of the day.

As a ‘fun weekend treat’ for finishing up the section on algorithms, Kaiba had tasked the class with solving a Rubik’s Cube and writing out a generalized solution of moves. The class groaned, but the entire assignment had only taken Atem a solid ten minutes, most of which was the writing part. He used to solve the tricky little puzzles behind the counter during boring shifts at Kame Game, and was pretty proud of his twelve-second speedcubing record.

The reading assignment had also been a case of good fortune. In preparation for the next section on Greek mathematics, Kaiba had assigned a myriad of Platonic dialogues that expounded on the Theory of Forms, which would have meant several hours pouring over some difficult and heavy material. That is, if Atem hadn’t already become so intimately familiar with them in his philosophy classes that he could practically recite the arguments from memory.

Plato and his contemporaries in long forgotten Athens held the study of mathematics on a divine pedestal. They believed mathematical objects to be intermediates, a kind of stepping stone between the flawed reality of our physical, mortal world and that perfect, eternal, and unchanging realm of pure ideas, or Forms. By applying oneself to the practice and application of reasoning from first principles, the deeper secrets of understanding may reveal themselves to the worthy practitioner. That one might reach that elusive rising trikolon of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

There were a lot of flaws in Plato’s argument, but Atem proposed the best proof by contradiction lay in Kaiba’s onerous attitude. He could almost hear his gruff, callous laugh now, his soft lips indulging in the deliciousness of the word _aisthesis,_ those smooth, alabaster hands turning the pages on a worn out copy of _Timaeus_ before he--

“Yo, ground control to Major Atem. Do you read me? I asked if you wanted any ketchup.”

* * *

When Atem arrived to Monday’s class, a stray seat was empty in the second row where another student had made the call to drop. It was too late, though. The tug of habit was already pulling him towards his designated spot at the front of the room.

“Good morning, delinquents. I hope some of you took my advice and did the readings or today’s discussion will involve a lot of silence.”

Atem sat close enough to notice where the sleet and wind had stung Kaiba’s high cheekbones raw on his walk over to the building. He flung his damp peacoat over the podium and pulled out his hand-drafted lecture notes and a hot cup of coffee.

“Today’s question is, why do Plato’s Forms make such shitty mathematical objects?”

This was it. Kaiba had mistakenly taken this game to Atem’s home field, and Atem never passed over a chance to show off before of a captive audience. He could feel a Ciceronian monologue coming on to aggravate Kaiba’s Catiline.

“Precision. Separability. Plurality.”

“Care to enlighten us further, Aristotle?” Kaiba went so far as to write the three words on the board, but Atem didn’t need his approval to know he was right.

“If you’re asserting that the divinity of ideas differentiates them from the physical objects you’re equating them too, you’ll inevitably be disappointed with even minor imperfections. Lines that aren’t quite straight enough, oblong circles, crooked squares... This is the issue of _precision_.”

Kaiba’s sleek handwriting captured a few key words under the first heading, following along with Atem’s thoughts.

“On that note, can we even assume that physical objects and ideas, the non-physical essence of something, are equitable to begin with? Physical objects cannot be distinct from matter, so they lack the immutability and immortality of ideas. Now we have a problem of _separability_.”

Atem watched Kaiba’s lanky frame sway from one contrapposto to another as his writing marched further down the board.

“Last, the uniqueness of objects presents an issue. For example, maybe we draw five triangles on the board, which are all distinct, but we can only assign them one idea – triangle – and we lose that distinction. This is the issue of _plurality_.”

Kaiba finished scribbling under the last word and turned back to face the class, where one girl in the back row was feeling brave enough to raise her hand.

“P-Professor… could we, umm, go back and review what Forms are?”

“Did you even bother looking past the first page of the assignment?” Kaiba was seething, his knuckles turning bone-white around the chalk.

“Well, umm, the homework was long too and--” The girl was rapidly losing what little confidence she had, shifting uneasily in her seat with Kaiba’s mounting frustration.

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“Umm, what I mean is, the readings were really hard and I just thought--” Her face was burning up and everyone in the room could see the tears stinging behind her eyes, the dam closer to bursting with every stinging remark.

“I’m sorry, were the words too big for you? Maybe you should enroll in remedial English instead of wasting my time.”

Kaiba’s cutting vitriol had struck a killing blow. The innocent brunette set herself to bawling and darted for the door before the class could hear her sobs. She left her purse behind under the desk. The stillness in the room produced a silence so heavy all that could be heard was the steady sleet against the windows.

Unfazed by another fallen pupil, Kaiba’s oppressive crusade of Greek logic marched on without her.

“So, Forms are a problem. Give me a solution.”

The quiet in the room remained unbroken. Even Atem didn’t feel quite comfortable speaking up after that confrontational episode. He resolved to, after a moment, when it became obvious that no one else would.

“We recognize that mathematical objects are a realm of their own, neither physical nor divine. Just mathematical. They’re a convenient tool designed to derive truths that transcend beyond our limited human perception of the world around us using a simple, well-defined ontological structure.”

“That’s correct. This structure is what we will use to start doing rigorous math instead of numerical parlor tricks. We will start where the history of modern mathematics begins: 300 BC in Ptolemaic Egypt with the postulates and propositions of Euclid’s Elements.”

Was that really true? That the foundation of modern math came from his beloved Egypt? Well, the Hellenistic part of its history, anyway, a part which Atem wasn’t particularly keen on. Still, the thought made the prospect of the next topic significantly more exciting. Atem took out a notebook to start taking notes.

Kaiba droned on to the top of the hour, with a ruler and a piece of chalk on a string going over a long and dull list of definitions of points and lines and shapes and circles, stressing the precision of language for talking about geometries and the importance of using full, complete sentences when describing everything. It all felt very trivial and obvious, but Atem appreciated the value of beginning on a clearly delineated and rock solid foundation for any quality argument.

Once he had laid some ground work with definitions and common notions, including the timeless classic _the whole is greater than the part_ , Kaiba proposed a series of axioms:

1\. We can draw a straight line between any two points.  
2\. We can extend any straight line in either direction.  
3\. We can describe a circle with a given radius.  
4\. All right angles are equal.  
5\. Given that a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if extended, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.

Okay, one of these things is _definitely_ not like the others.

“Hold on, you can’t just declare that an axiom, it’s not even remotely intuitive or self-evident, that’s not how axioms work.” Atem protested.

“Raise your hand, this is a lecture not a circus.” Kaiba looked as though he was still holding the grudge from the earlier interruption.

“This is a university, not a high school, and I will do no such thing.”

Kaiba huffed. “Fine. What’s your problem?”

“Number five does not meet the requirements for being an axiom.”

Kaiba’s face took on an expression of unadulterated haughty arrogance and unbridled egotism.

“Well then, if you take issue with it why don’t you come up here and prove it for the class?”

“Don’t try to play me, you’re the one with something to prove here. What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence, and I don’t recall you providing any support for that statement.”

The atmosphere was electric, half the class dazzled by Atem’s brazen attitude, the other half petrified under the ruinous stare of one Seto Kaiba. One could almost expect a stay tumbleweed to roll in through the door. They were spared a shoot-out when the clock struck nine.

“Atem, if you really think you’re smart enough to fight me on a rich, 3000 year old tradition of mathematics you can do so in my office hours, not in my classroom.” He threw on his coat and stormed out the door.

Atem sat simpering in front of the board for a while longer and the rest of the class filtered out into the hall. The argument itself was inconsequential.

Kaiba remembered his name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Opening dialogue shamelessly stolen from [this](https://maivalentine.tumblr.com/post/157898469696/you-know-whos-looking-fine-tonight-seth) iconic Mean Girls x Yu-Gi-Oh! Post
> 
> “No man is born evil. Rather, the bad become bad by way of ill body and poor education, things which are hateful to every man and which happen to him against his will.” --probably underlined in poor Kaiba’s copy of [_Timaeus_](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-timaeus/)
> 
> You can play the popular mobile puzzle game [Euclidea](https://www.euclidea.xyz/) which challenges you with geometric constructions based on the problems in Euclid’s [Elements](https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookI/bookI.html), zero math knowledge required! It’s a personal favorite of mine.
> 
> The issue Atem takes with Euclid’s frame work is truly the Achilles’ heel of classical geometry, called [The Parallel Postulate](https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ParallelPostulate.html). In a way, the question it begs lays the ground work for Kaiba’s entire field of study. Kaiba asks Atem to prove it, because he knows that's an impossible task. Enjoy a [relevant spicy meme](https://talladeganights.tumblr.com/post/623459040214777856).


	4. Bizarre Love Triangles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This chapter is dedicated to one of the most influential mathematicians of the late 20th century, [J. H. Conway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway), who passed away in April of COVID-19.
> 
> Please be respectful of others and remember to wear a mask when leaving the house.
> 
> I admire him most for his work on [non-periodic tilings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinwheel_tiling#The_Conway_tessellation) but you can listen to him discuss the famous Conway’s Game of Life in his own words [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8kUJL04ELA).

“Why do we end up here every time you get the restaurant pick?”

“Fuck off, Mahad, it’s not my problem you eat like a rabbit.” 

Seth led their little band to the same table he reserved every time, by the large plate glass window with a view of the pier that inevitably let in a terrible draft. There was no arguing with a creature of habit. 

Atem settled in, with Mahad on his left and Seth on his right, as always. Shada and Karim had found the time to come too and this made for a tight fit in the upscale restaurant. He was glad Yugi had declined his offer to tag along. _They’re more your friends than mine, you don’t always have to bring me_ his twin insisted, even though Yugi and Mahad were certainly close in their own right. 

“This place smells like a whale’s vagina…” Karim complained, picking up the menu and carelessly flipping through the options they’d all seen a dozen times before.

“It smells like high quality seafood, not that you ungrateful plebeians would know.” Seth looked at the menu too even though he always ordered the same thing. Atem laughed at how out of place a group of college-aged boys, mostly African, looked in the decrepit New England fishery. Even Seth, WASP-ier than the lot of them combined, was still too tan to quite match the regular patrons. 

“Can’t you pick somewhere less expensive?” Mahad complained.

“Just order your fucking salad, I’ll buy it.” Seth sounded exasperated. 

“Language!” Atem looked around to see if any of the snooty clientele had heard, but Seth looked unfazed. He’d spent most of his life completely unaware of his snobby Boston lawyer father’s existence, but now that he had taken an interest in his ‘academic talents’ Seth didn’t seem to have any qualms about taking advantage of the absentee asshole’s money whenever it suited him. 

Atem was surveying his options, always determined to avoid eating the same thing twice, while Seth took the liberty of ordering appetizers without consulting the rest of the table. Shada ate the whole bowl of lemon slices the waiter had left for the water pitcher, just to watch Karim grimace in sheer disgust. 

In a few minutes, the waiter had returned with an overflowing plate of lucious raw oysters with delicate ramekins of butter and bone-handled knives for shucking. Atem whittled into the hinge of a particularly fat number, remembering the rude lesson on seafood decorum from Seth on one of their earlier visits. 

“You really had to order these snot balls again?” Shada looked grossed out at the selection.

“This is why we don’t trust you with the executive decisions…” Karim wasn’t too pleased with the choice either.

“I have superior executive functioning to _someone_ at this table…” Seth shot a look at Atem, right when he was slurping down an oyster in a particularly loud and inelegant haste. He flashed an unabashed smile back. 

“Yeah, we get it. You’re still bitter about losing the presidential election to Atem three years in a row. You don’t have to keep reminding us, we won’t forget.” Karim said.

“Unfortunately for you it’s a popularity contest, not a contract lawyering contest.” Shada said.

“Atem! Tell them there’s more to it than that!” Seth implored.

“Oh Seth…” Atem gave a cheeky chuckle. “If you want to be loved, try being lovable.”

Everyone laughed, but no one harder than Mahad. 

They may have claimed to be opposed to the offering, but Shada and Karim picked up their own knives and started worrying open the bivalves and eating a few themselves. Steadily it seemed everyone began enjoying their fill. Everyone except Mahad who sat stewing in one corner of the table. Atem could feel the indecision radiating off from beside him. 

“Mahad I respect your commitment to veganism and I won’t encourage you to betray your moral standing but is this a matter of ethics?” Atem was only half joking when he asked. 

“ _Sadiq…_ ” Mahad hissed in return. “Don’t start with this around that jackal.” A clear reference to Seth. 

“God, just eat one already, they're literally brainless…” Seth rolled his eyes and cracked open another shell with a soft pop.

“What does it mean to be brainless, exactly? What’s an appropriate measurement for sentience when it comes to killing and eating living things? You have to have some measurement, Mahad, or you couldn’t even eat plants.” Atem ventured, turning Mahad’s moral quandary into an open forum for the table whether he wanted it or not. 

“Well…” Mahad gave a heavy sign as though he hadn’t really thought about this so hard before and hadn’t planned to do so tonight. “I suppose I find it immoral to inflict pain on a living creature that has the capacity to feel it.”

“Oysters do have a basic nervous system with neurons, ganglion, and pain receptors which allow them to have some response to stimuli.” Shada supplied.

“Yeah but they don’t have a central nervous system or nociceptors so whatever they experience as ‘pain’ is nothing like how we perceive it. At best they have an on or off sense of touch.” Karim said.

“How does that relate to plants?” Atem was asking all the existential questions. “Plants can respond to stimuli, that’s a basic requirement for being alive. And they must have some vague ability to perceive touch, how else would vining plants climb things?”

Atem paused for a moment to shuck another oyster, clearly unfazed by the moral implications, before continuing. “To that end, how can we clearly define pain? Is it the biochemical reaction that results from bodily damage or the mental strife that it induces that you see as the crime inflicted, Mahad?”

His dread-haired companion gave a groan and let his long locks fall around him when he pressed his forehead to the table, clearly growing tired of being the center of attention. 

“Veganism is for pussies.” Seth had a bias for genetic fallacy and ad hominem attacks that Atem thought made him impossible to meaningfully debate with. “Humans are higher on the food chain, we eat creatures below us. End of story. If you can’t handle that, maybe you weren’t made to survive.” Everyone glared at him after that remark.

“Maybe so, but the prophets preach to beware of meat, because it has an addiction like the addiction of _wine_.” Mahad chastised Seth while the brunet took a deep swig of his pairing out of sheer spite. 

“Aren’t you scheduled to be holier-than-thou somewhere else tonight?” Seth needled.

“Not until ten.” Mahad smiled.

The rest of their meal carried on in relative camaraderie. Mahad opted out of the oysters in favor of his salad but Seth wasn’t rude enough to try to force one down his throat either. Atem felt adventurous and tried some exotic seasonal special called ‘stuffed quahogs’ which, disappointingly, was just a type of stuffed clam. Seth was quiet about picking up the bill for the whole table and the quintet walked back to campus in a rowdy flock, just as the beginnings of a slushy snow started to dribble from the dark sky. 

* * *

If Kaiba weren’t bound by moral obligation he wouldn’t have come within spitting distance of his advisor’s house for his entire tenure in Domino. But as it happened, Pegasus and that vapid socialite he called a wife insisted on throwing four departmental functions a year: one at the start of every semester, one for graduation, and one at Christmas. 

Attendance was not optional.

The week of orientation, which he thought was as juvenile as it was useless for grad students, he’d skipped out on Cecilia’s tacky ‘pi’ desserts and Sierpinski triangle champagne tower to move Mokuba into their new apartment. This turned out to be a regrettable decision when Kaiba became the center of attention for _not_ being there for a full week after the event. Mathematicians, it seemed, were prone to gossip with lives so dull they were left with little to gossip about.

And that’s how Kaiba found himself in this predicament, picking at warm cucumber sandwiches while some ass-kissing dolts from the department joked with Pegasus about the logistics of setting up a good croquet indoors. 

Kaiba had a self-imposed rule of always staying for precisely ninety minutes. Long enough to be remembered, short enough to avoid an overdose on small talk. If Pegasus couldn’t circle the room fast enough to catch him, that was his loss. 

“Seto, what a lovely surprise!” Kaiba winced at the sound of his first name.

“Call me Kaiba, Cecilia.”

“Silly me, how could I forget…” He’d been in Domino for three years, and been to their house at least a dozen unfortunate times. Kaiba knew she didn’t forget. “It’s awfully warm in here, why don’t you let me take that wet coat? There’s wine over by the fire--”

“I’ll keep my coat, thanks.” 

His blunt demeanor was usually enough to chase her off, but that was assuming her older, greyer half didn’t catch-up first. No such luck today.

“Make yourself comfortable and stay a while, Kaiba-boy, it’s not every day we get to see your shining face in the wild.” The evening had only begun an hour ago, but the professor had already overpoured himself and it was beginning to show.

“I have to leave at 7:30.” Kaiba lied.

“If it’s to attend your meeting of Antisocials Anonymous I propose we stage an intervention with the lovely company here tonight,” Pegasus had a laugh at his expense with another thick swig of wine. 

“I’m calling my brother.” Another lie. 

Cecelia latched on to the topic of Mokuba like a burr on a bareback.

“I can’t believe little Kaiba is all grown up! I remember how adorable he was when y’all first moved to town, those chubby cheeks and messy hair. But no manners! I see where he gets it from. He always did love my apple pie! What’s his address? Maybe I could mail some. Oh, but won’t it get stale on the way?” 

Blah, blah, blah. Cecelia ran her mouth about the blandest bullshit. He wasn’t sure how Pegasus could stand it, but he had a feeling it had more to do with blonde hair and dollar signs than anything deep.

Ninety. Minutes.

Pegasus and his beau must have grown tired of prodding him because they left to mingle over the catering with some first year students, still unwitting admirers of his work.

Kaiba scrounged around the bar for a dry paper napkin and fished a ballpoint out of his coat pocket. The evening didn’t have to be a total write-off if he could sketch some ideas out for later. He still needed to choose the bonus problem for tomorrow’s class. 

He’d assigned the first book of _The Elements_ so it couldn’t be a problem directly from there, but related. Provable with the first 48 postulates and enough creativity. He’d half a mind to choose trisecting an angle, but they hadn’t covered strategies for proving impossibility yet and even then the deceptively simple problem required some rather advanced constructs from Galois theory. An unfair challenge was the opposite of a good one. 

Kaiba mulled over some minor theorems and lemmas, the sort of marginally important results that get buried in the challenge problem sections of math textbooks. He made imprecise constructions with little circles and triangles, tearing through the thin paper of the napkin when he scribbled out the latest suggestion.

_Too easy, Atem will get that right away..._

Kaiba pulled the brakes on his train of thought. When had he started writing these questions _for Atem_? It was true that in eleven classes, Atem had won an uncontested eleven-question-streak of right answers and he was becoming harder to stump each time. 

Now, he caught himself starting to wonder how to challenge Atem, what Atem might find interesting, what Atem might say, or question, about the day's lesson. What had him so bored he’d turned in his homework with a wall of tiny kuribohs doodled up the margins. 

He reassured himself that Atem’s cocky overconfidence would be his ultimate undoing. His attitude was nothing but an obnoxious, grating flaw, undesirable in every way. 

As Kaiba schemed up increasingly challenging problems, he could almost feel the heat of Atem’s rivalrous garnet eyes, the low, frustrated moan from an unresolved proof at 3 AM, an olive thumb running over his soft lips, lost in concentration, before he--

Pegasus’s parlour felt suffocating and Kaiba decided there was a sudden appeal to a long walk home in the cold rain. 

* * *

Atem was busy.

Not just in the moment, but as an enduring state of mind. He was enrolled in a full load of upper-level classes, plus a seminar. Not to mention planning for philosophy graduate school was nothing to balk at. It consumed a large chunk of his time worrying about application essays and struggling to get published to boost his chance at acceptance. 

On top of that, he was still the president of Delta House and executive council meetings ate up his Tuesday nights, full fraternity meetings on Monday afternoons. Monday nights were spared for homework and Wednesday nights reserved for Ryou’s D&D campaign. Thursdays meant attending office hours in the philosophy department, or if he escaped early, trivia night at _Nat 20!_ with Yugi’s friends, possibly the odd mixer. Fridays he reserved for time with his Aibou and Saturdays were always party days with as many friends as would come, occasionally starting as early as ten in the morning. 

So yes. Atem was busy. But if the choice was between sleep, school, and friends, sleep would always lose to the other two. Tonight was no different.

Atem was sitting at the coffee table again, surrounded by the growing number of scribbled out loose leaf sheets covered in failed attempts at Kaiba’s problems. He was falling into a bad habit of working til all hours of the night and worried that he might start keeping Yugi up. 

He looked over to find his twin on his bed, the bigger one in the middle of the room. The president’s suite wasn’t designed with two people in mind, but they made it work. Even if Yugi’s extra twin bed looked out of place crammed among the classically academic interior. 

Yugi took a break from whatever he was programming and abandoned the laptop on the comforter to flip through things on the nightstand. 

“Atem?”

“Hnn” He gave an absent reply, fingers worrying his lip, already deep in concentration over another sticky postulate.

“Have you actually opened any of these books?” Yugi plucked Cicero’s _On the Nature of the Gods_ off the top of the pile, rifling through the pages.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, of course. Those are for my other classes.” Atem didn’t look up from his work.

“Are you sure? Because it looks like this pile has been collecting dust for three weeks, and it looks like there’s not a single crease in any of the bindings and it definitely looks like the purchase receipts are still jammed in the cover of every one!” 

“Aibou?” Atem did look up now, hiding his guilt behind a passive expression.

“Interesting...” His twin smiled like he knew something Atem didn’t. He picked some papers out of the enormous, ever-growing, well-annotated stack spilling off the opposite night stand. “And what’s this? More math? Don’t call me surprised but God, Atem, how much money have you spent in printing fees this semester!” 

“Kaiba assigns a lot of readings.”

“Yeah and I bet you read every one.” Yugi’s face still had that impish smirk, begging Atem to ask what he was thinking.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Oh, nothing…” He wandered over to the other sofa and sat across the table making a mirror of his twin. “You just seem to be really fascinated with math these days, that’s all. It’s not like you to be so... _preoccupied_.”

“Math requires a lot of focus.” Atem was still uncertain where Yugi was going with all this. “Besides, it’s not as bad as you think. It’s a real challenge, everything is another puzzle with a clever solution. I think I’m starting to like it.”

“Uh-huh…” Yugi said unconvinced, crossing his arms. “None of this seems very useful.”

“Why does everything have to be useful? Why can’t something just be beautiful?”

“Ah yes, a picture of a triangle and some squares, truly a Michelangelo, I can’t believe I never noticed before.” Yugi teased.

“I spent hours on this proof of the Pythagorean Theorem! You can’t appreciate the satisfaction and elegance of a slick argument. It’s just like philosophy, the beauty is in the simplicity.” Atem snatched up the paper and held it like a holy relic. 

“A squared plus b squared equals c squared? Atem, I’m glad you are enjoying the math you hated in high school but maybe it’s time for bed now.” Yugi was barely listening.

“Yeah, yeah, sure, it sounds elementary but don’t you ever question it? We’re told to memorize things, but they never explain them. I hate that. How do you even know what they say is true? What if they’re wrong? How would you know? How do you know anything is true if you don’t prove it for yourself?” Atem insisted.

“I suppose I never considered triangles to be that deep.” Yugi wasn’t entertaining his brother’s bizarre epistemological rants at this hour. 

“This one’s better than my other answers. You can see the whole argument in a single picture, one neat package implies a deeper meaning, it doesn’t even need any words. It’s flawless. Kaib-- um, nevermind, just believe me, it’s perfect.”

“Ugh…” Yugi groaned, getting more tired the later it got. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t need to get an A, you can graduate as long as you pass. This grade won’t even show up on the transcript for your graduate school applications. It doesn’t actually matter.”

“How can you say it doesn’t matter? I won’t lose a challenge to Kaiba!” 

“I _knew_ it! This isn’t about math or grades or winning, it’s about _Kaiba_! Just admit it!” Yugi had levied an outstanding move in the game of wits against his veteran twin that earned him an unexpected and very revealing blush.

“No it’s not!” The lack of a quick riposte was another sign he’d lost his even footing.

“Then it’s true!! You don’t like math, you like your math _teacher_ ! Oh God, Atem, why do you have to be so weird!” Yugi jumped up and started pacing the floor, hands gesturing wildly in the air. “I mean, yeah, I _guess_ Kaiba’s attractive or something, I wouldn’t really know--”

“ _YUGI!_ ” Atem cried, only using his real name when matters were deathly serious.

“But have you ever talked to him? Heard him talk??” There wasn’t enough room to accommodate all the pacing required to calm down from this revelation.

“Yes, I have, and--”

“He’s practically the lamppost by the entrance to Devil’s sanctuary!” Yugi was having a nuclear meltdown loud enough to reach Jou and Honda upstairs if AZ-5 couldn’t be immediately engaged. “Atem!! He’s a professor!”

“Technically he’s only a grad student--” Wrong answer.

“No no no no no, don’t say things like that, don’t even start! A _crush_ on _Kaiba_?! How could you do this to me?? To yourself?!” Yugi was reaching critical mass, there was nothing to slow the chain reaction now. 

Might as well fan the flames.

“I don’t have ‘crushes’ Aibou. _You_ have crushes.” Atem gave a devious grin at the innocent twin. “But if I _did_ , well… Who’s to say how far Kaiba would go...”

“STOP IT!!! I don’t want to even _think_ about Kaiba like that! Not with a girl, not with anyone, and definitely not with you! Atem, how would you even know he likes… likes… _you know_!” Yugi blushed.

“Stop acting like straight is the default setting!” Now Atem was genuinely miffed.

“No, I mean... you’re right, I’m sorry. That was insensitive. You know I would never judge.” Yugi calmed down just a smidge. “But this isn’t about Kaiba, it’s about you! He’s the absolute worst. A relationship is about more than good looks and I don’t see any outcome where you aren’t the one who gets hurt. I just worry about you, alright?” 

“I’m an adult. I can make my own decisions.” Atem grumbled. “And it isn’t about looks anyway.”

“Then what is it about?”

“You wouldn’t understand…” Atem knew that was a sharp jab at Yugi’s feelings but it was the truth. 

He and Yugi were inseparably close, but when it came to matters of the heart his twin had a way of using his own happiness with Anzu as a template for how any healthy relationship should look. Atem knew he only meant well. He just wasn’t sure how to explain that simply wasn’t what he wanted--what he needed--without sounding like he thought what Yugi had was wrong. 

“Atem…” Yugi’s violet eyes and voice softened in unison and he lowered himself back on the sofa. “I want you to feel like you can talk to me. We talk about everything! I know that I can’t always relate to your experiences, but I want to try my best. I mean, love is love, right? It can’t be that different from me and Anz--”

“Aibou,” Atem fidgeted, drawing patterns in the wood table lacquer with the pencil eraser. “You’ve always been very supportive, don’t worry about that. This isn’t about being gay.”

Yugi waited, but didn’t push for anything else. 

“Anzu is an incredible woman and an unparalleled friend. She’s perfect for you. But a man like Anzu wouldn’t be perfect for me.” The pink eraser ripped off the green track when he pressed too hard.

“Then what do you want?” Yugi gently encouraged. 

“I have plenty of friends.” A small smile blossomed alongside the hint of rose on Atem’s cheeks. “I need a rival.”

* * *

Kaiba sat on his desk staring at the chalkboard covered in today’s meager effort at thesis progress. Not for the first time, he contemplated replacing the old fashioned geared clock with a digital one to rid the room of the faint, incessant ticking. Not for the first time, he looked up at the clock to check the time. 7:06 AM.

Atem had never been this late before, and Kaiba was beginning to wonder if he wouldn’t show up at all. This would mark the first day he hadn’t come since the start of the semester, and Kaiba almost let himself feel sad at the loss of what was fast becoming a comfortable routine. 

He ran his hands through his hair with a hefty groan, pushing his bangs back from his forehead before they immediately fell back into place. He tapped the chalk against the plain of the desk with a frequency to outpace the second hand on the clock before resolving to pour a fourth cup of coffee with the remainder of the kettle’s hot water. His hands would jitter when it came time for class, but no one sat close enough to notice.

 _No one but Atem…_ His brain supplied unhelpfully, and he swatted away the stray thought like a pesky gnat. He looked back at the work on the board, still struggling with reverse-engineering a solid mapping from the 1-D mobius strip curve representation back to the point set for the rectangle vertices. Swimming in familiar dissociation, he didn’t notice when the door he’d left ajar drifted open without a knock. 

Kaiba turned around to grab his coffee and was met with a sea of familiar tousles of red and black and yellow sitting in _his_ chair.

“Good morning, Kaiba.” Atem had a deliberately innocent smile, evidently aware of what he’d done, with his hands wrapped around his own cup of coffee steaming out of a paper cup. 

“What makes you think it’s so good?” Kaiba snapped, picking up the stray papers Atem had set on the desk. “You’re late.”

“I didn’t realize I was mandated to be here.” Atem laughed. “Did you miss me?”

“Get out of my seat.”

“There’s another chair right there, what’s so special about this one?” Atem was acting particularly cavalier this morning and went so far as to prop his lazy canvas sneakers on the edge of the desk. He must be proud of something he’d written up. 

“Because this one is mine.” Kaiba snaked his fingers around one warm, bronze ankle to yank Atem’s foot off the table. The touch lingered far longer than it should have when he saw the shocked flush turning the bridge on his wide, round nose a shade of russet. He could feel the taut line of his slender calf clench with nervousness under his thumb. Kaiba let the captive leg fall to the floor, but not without allowing the pads of his fingers to gently follow the skin until it left his hand. 

Atem pulled his thumb to his lips in his thoughtful habit and his surprised expression shifted towards something far more dangerous that Kaiba prayed didn’t suggest he’d caught on to the subtext behind the gesture. He turned away to flip through the papers Atem brought, hyper aware that his own pale skin was a lot more revealing than Atem’s tawny color and could betray him at any moment.

Would it be too obvious to ask him to leave? Probably. That could only make it more awkward… He turned over the pages deliberately, making it clear he was now going over the work and whatever stormy moment had been brewing between them was now blowing over. 

“Impressed?” 

Kaiba didn’t dare turn around to see what he knew was an unscrupulous face. Atem’s tone, taken in any reasonable setting, could only be described as flirtatious. Almost laced with the unspoken double entendre _impressed with my work or my physique?_

No. 

Kaiba wasn’t sure when his wild imagination started tinting every interaction in this indecent light but it needed to stop. If he kept projecting onto something that wasn’t there--or worse, _was_ there--he might slip up and find himself hurtling towards inevitable disaster at 30 kilometers per second. 

Having Atem in the office, alone, with the door shut, in the early morning when no one else was around, was becoming a minefield. 

The stack of papers was too dense for a single staple and as Kaiba flipped through he realized Atem had finished a proof for every single postulate. 

“This was meant to be a reading, not a workbook. I don’t have time to look at all this.” He lied. 

Kaiba was definitely going to look at all of Atem’s unique strategies. For an amateur, he had some innate appreciation for the sort of proper results that revealed more meaning in the process than the final answer. It was also fun to watch him approach a problem without all the bias or preconceived notions of what was right or wrong. Everything he concocted was creative and new, even if he unwittingly stumbled into some traditional solutions along the way.

“You don’t have to,” Maybe Atem sounded slightly disappointed, maybe he imagined it. “Just the last one.”

Kaiba flipped to the last page, number 47, which didn’t even have any words. Only a simple drawing. 

In the middle of the page sat a right triangle, with a square drawn off each of the three sides. A line dropped from the right angled vertex to divide the square on the hypotenuse in two unequal partitions. Two more lines fell from the same right-angled point and connected with the corners of the far end of the same square. Two final lines were drawn from the remaining corners of the triangle to join with corners on their own opposite-side squares.

Five moves for a winning strategy. Deep implication. Flawless simplicity. The perfect elegance. 

“You looked this up,” Kaiba threw the paper back on the desk fuming.

“I absolutely did not! I spent hours coming up with this!” Atem was distraught. “And then it just came to me.”

“You expect me to believe you just ‘came up with’ Euclid’s windmill over a casual dinner one day?”

“Was it really that hard for you the first time?” Atem sounded boastful. “The answer’s in the heart of all the earlier pieces, they build to it if you trust in how to use them.”

“Whatever, I don’t rely on superstition for inspiration.” Kaiba said. He wanted a good idea to knock Atem down a peg and returned to an early problem he had in mind…

“Do you want something a little more challenging?” He knew Atem was feeling overconfident now and would take the bait.

“I think I can handle you.” Atem’s wily smile churned his stomach and Kaiba tried not to focus on the deliberate mis-phrasing of the statement. 

“Three Puzzles.” He turned around to erase the chalkboard and write them out.

  1. **Trisecting the Angle** \- Divide a given angle into three equal angles.
  2. **Squaring the Circle** \- Construct a square with the same area as a given circle.
  3. **Doubling the Cube** \- Construct a cube with twice the volume of a given cube.



“Sound easy enough? No looking up the answers. Now get out of my office, it’s almost time for class.” Kaiba successfully shooed the invader out of his seat and saw him wander slightly dejected towards the door.

Atem seemed to dither at the threshold with some indecision.

“Or we could play another game…” He said, eyes already searching the shelves.

Kaiba wouldn’t have been strictly opposed if he wasn’t already in such an unfortunate state. He needed time to pull himself together before the lecture. He looked at his watch, but Atem had come by later than usual and a game would cut it too close to class time. He lost his opportunity to object, though.

Atem spotted a box that hadn’t been on the shelf the last time he was there and his expression lit up with excitement.

“You play duel monsters?!” He snatched up the classic original-release tin, probably nearing twenty years old, before Kaiba could stop him, face burning with embarrassment. How did he forget he’d left that there? Usually he kept it at home… 

“N-No… I like chess now, that’s just a stupid children's card game--”

“Duel monsters is my _favorite_.” Atem looked unfazed through his elation, he probably hadn’t heard him. 

It made sense, though, Kaiba realized. His homeworks had occasionally included haphazard duel monsters doodles in the white space, including an unforgettably offensive and crude drawing of a dark magician bopping a blue-eyes upside the head. His cellphone also had a dorky little purple magician charm dangling off the side. 

Fine. _Maybe_ it was safe to make his admission.

“It’s my favorite too. People think it’s lame because it doesn’t have a long enough tape for Turing completeness but computational complexity measurements always underestimate the nuance of playing a human opponent... What deck do you run?” He was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that question but Kaiba tried to sound the appropriate level of disinterested. Atem still might laugh at him for being so serious about something so childish. 

“Magicians! Yugi and I still buy a booster pack at the game shop every Friday. I have all the cards I need right now, but there’s something about tradition and that new card smell, you know?” 

Atem was gushing, and Kaiba’s only thought was _cute_ which he desperately struggled to suppress. 

“Magicians? Could you have chosen anything more idiotic?” Kaiba hid his unwelcome feelings behind a taunt.

“You’re probably only saying that because you have a Blue-Eyes deck.” Kaiba’s eyes narrowed when Atem opened the little tin and burst out laughing. Sure enough, three well-worn looking first edition Blue-Eyes sat on top. 

“Besides, they’re whimsical and magical and I think they’re neat.” Atem defended his position.

“Magic isn’t real.” Kaiba said.

“Like _dragons_ are?” Atem rolled his eyes. “Pfft, _real_ , such semantics... Literally nothing is real. Your name is gibberish but you still answer to it because you crave identity and structure you pathetic featherless biped.”

Kaiba wanted to quip back, but couldn’t help himself. The words were dead and a laugh fell out in their place. He couldn’t remember the last time he laughed with anyone other than Mokuba, and instantly felt self-conscious. 

Atem laughed too, either at his own joke or at Kaiba, he couldn’t be sure which was worse, but it didn’t matter. It was warm and comfortable in an unfamiliar but pleasant way.

“We should play sometime! I’ll bring my deck.” He flashed a handsome smile. “But I’m warning you, Kaiba--I never lose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I wanted the story to take place in Japan, but Japan doesn’t have fraternities… Instead, Domino University is somewhere on the New England coast line and is a bastardized cross between Princeton’s famed math department and Faber College’s debauchery ha ha ha
> 
> There are many proof for the [Pythagorean Theorem ](https://www.central.edu/writing-anthology/2019/01/31/159/#:~:text=In%20order%20to%20prove%20the,conclusions%20from%20his%20earlier%20proofs.&text=Euclid%20proved%20that%20%E2%80%9Cif%20two,respect%E2%80%9D%20\(Dunham%2039\).)but Euclid’s is the most beloved. It’s cleverness and elegance is nearly unparalleled and is the classic point-to example of mathematical beauty. You have no idea how many geometers I know who think they’re edgy and cool for having [Euclid’s Windmill ](https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookI/propI47.gif)(the diagram from the proof) tattooed on their body. I really wish I were kidding. 
> 
> The problems Kaiba gives Atem at the end of the chapter are the three [Classical Problems](https://www.britannica.com/science/mathematics/The-three-classical-problems) which are unsolvable without far more advanced mathematics which leads to the concept of [transcendental numbers ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seUU2bZtfgM)that wouldn’t come about for nearly 2,000 years. Basically, Kaiba gives Atem an "impossible" question just to mess with his arrogance.


	5. Total Ellipse of the Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the posting delays, I hope y'all accept apologies in the form of 10k worth of mutual pining

Atem was rudely roused on Thursday morning (his one weekday for sleeping in to a humane hour) not by his alarm but an endless flurry of pings on his phone. The frat chat buzzed so hard the thing was liable to vibrate its way off the nightstand and onto the floor which could only mean one thing…

Snow.

He heaved himself out from the sanctuary of his comforter to draw back the velvet curtains from the bedroom window. Sure enough, the sun’s glistening white reflection was blinding off the flawless dunes masking the surface of the lake. The clouds were broken for the moment and the morning light caught every flake, morphing them to diamonds as they carpeted the surroundings with tranquility. 

Atem didn’t give a soft white damn about the stuff. Overrated. Beautiful, certainly, but the novelty had worn off after his freshman year and he hated being corralled into playing in the cold. He was content to watch from the safety of the window, perhaps with a hot drink and a good book.

Unfortunately, only Mahad seemed to share his disdain for the ruthless northern winter. The other boys had been watching the weather report all week, praying the predicted nor'easter would bless the pistes with glittering, fluffy powder. They were not disappointed.

Atem heard the phone buzz again before clamoring against the hardwood. He picked it up, grateful the screen was intact. He opened the chat, not bothering to scroll all the way to the top.

 **_Better_Than_You:_ ** _“But what if my name’s Jounouchi and I don’t own a pair of skis?” The executive council reminds you that’s not their fucking problem._

 **_Karim_Pie:_ ** _I have a spare set at the chalet…_

 **_Better_Than_You:_ ** _Those are for Atem._

 **_JOUcy:_ ** _I CALL DIBS!!!_ _  
_ **_JOUcy:_ ** _HE’S NOT EVEN AWAKE!!!_

 **_Better_Than_You:_ ** _no._

 **_JOUcy:_ ** _FUCK YOU RICH BOY!!_ 凸(-_-)凸

 **_Honda_Civic:_ ** _Cut the caps its too early for screaming..._

 **_BlackMagic:_ ** _idk guys way too cold to go outside_

 **_shaduh:_ ** _Do you even understand how snow works??_

 **_BlackMagic:_ ** _road could be frozen over we could get stuck driving up there bad idea_

 **_Better_Than_You:_ ** _I’ll personally buy you a plane ticket back to Egypt._ _  
_ **_Better_Than_You:_ ** _You can go sandboarding and be a killjoy somewhere far away from me._

 **_Twincest:_ ** _@BlackMagic @JOUcy I can’t go this weekend, you can stay with me._ _  
_ **_Twincest:_ ** _ASDFGHJKL WHO CHANGED MY NAME AGAIN STOP IT!!!_ _  
_ **_Twincest_ ** _changed their name to_ **_KingOfGames._ **

**_XxSnakeEyesxX:_ ** _Yugi never comes on trips with the boys anymore #whipped_

That was more than a little mean from Ootogi. Atem knew Yugi was planning to support Anzu at her dance audition this Sunday. She was hoping to make the lead for the ballet company’s spring performance of _Giselle_ , and the role could make or break her chances at appearing in New York after graduation. 

He considered defending his brother, but the fratty meme chat hardly seemed the place. He opted for a change of topic instead.

 **_The_Pharaoh_ ** _: When are we leaving for the chalet?_

 **_JOUcy_ ** _: good morning sleeping beauty_

 **_Honda_Civic:_ ** _almost had to find a prince charming to kiss you awake_

 **_Better_Than_You:_ ** _Plan for as early as possible tomorrow._

 **_The_Pharaoh:_ ** _I have class Friday morning._

 **_shaduh:_ ** _whatever just skip it_

 **_The_Pharaoh:_ ** _Not this one..._

 **_KingOfGames:_ ** _and they called me whipped ;)_

 **_The_Pharaoh:_ ** _I’ll drive up when I get out, just send me the address_

 **_Karim_Pie_ ** _dropped a pin_

A small bubble appeared with a map to Karim’s family cabin in the Adirondacks, just over four hours away. If Atem left immediately after Kaiba’s class he could make it in time. That is, if Yugi didn’t need the car for the weekend, but his twin was usually accommodating when it came to sharing.

The bigger issue was finding time to finish Kaiba’s first exam this afternoon. He’d distributed the five-question take-home test on Monday with a due date of 5 PM Friday afternoon, all the while assuring them no amount of notes or open books would help them if they hadn’t been paying close attention in class and not to dare attempt using the internet or sharing answers to cheat. He would know.

Actually, Atem had safely bounded the first hurdle already. Wednesday’s lecture had been replaced with a timed in-class question: solving a 4x4 Rubik’s cube. Kaiba had distributed a collection of jumbled puzzles to the embittered students, most of whom had struggled and failed to fully grasp the solution to the 3x3 assignment. 

Atem had glanced around the room. A few students seemed to vaguely remember the steps to solve the simpler puzzle, but struggled to extrapolate them generally and apply the strategy to a novel situation. Others groaned in immediate defeat, probably those who had looked up the steps without much thought just to get credit on the homework. 

He briefly examined the puzzle. He hadn’t tried this version before but it couldn’t be so different from Sebestény’s original… He resolved to solve the outer rim with an analogous sequence of moves, leaving a scrambled 3x3 interior that could be quickly cleared with the memorized algorithm. 

He made a few errors that required recanting on the outside, but really, he could hardly be blamed. Encountering an OLL edge parity was nothing but bad luck. He burned an extra minute struggling to fully reduce to the 3x3 matrix, and the solution proved a breeze from there. Final time: 2 minutes 42 seconds. Far from his best work, but passable. 

He dumped the finished puzzle back in the cardboard box before a bewildered Kaiba was finished distributing them to the other half of the class and strode off without a backwards glance. One down, four to go.

Atem broke from his reverie to look back at his phone and swiped away the group chat, checking the weather forecast. A frosty 16°F for today’s high. He sighed and shuffled out to the bathroom, setting the shower to the maximum temperature. He scrunched the bathmat against the door jam, trapping all the steam from dissipating, and waited for the room to become a wet sauna before stripping down from his sweatshirt. 

The day was already slipping away and he ought to set out for the library before he lost any more time to work. The hot water hummed through the pipes and the white noise of the shower echoed off the tiles. When he closed his eyes, the warmth could almost be mistaken for the summer sun on his skin. He allowed his mind to wander and it doubled back to Kaiba, but he promised himself it was only for well-behaved thoughts about finishing his exam…

* * *

For the last half of Friday’s lecture, Atem drove Kaiba up and down the wall. His agitated, anxious expression watched everything save Kaiba and the board, but the clock most especially. He drummed his fingers against the table, bouncing one leg on the balls of his feet, but Kaiba couldn’t sneak in a word edgewise since he wasn’t actually causing a disturbance to anyone but him.

At the start, his phone was ringing off the hook and the vibration could be heard through his backpack. Atem had silenced the rectangular monster, though, before Kaiba had the satisfaction of scolding him. He still caught him eyeing the pocket with constant suspicion. 

The moment Kaiba finished his final word, Atem sprang out of his seat, carelessly shoving the crinkled paper of his exam booklet into his hands without a word. He threw his backpack over his shoulder, ripping the cellphone from the side pocket and immediately pressing it to his ear. 

“Hey, Atem!” Kaiba snarled after his student. 

“ _What?_ ” But Atem was barking into the receiver, not at him. “Yeah, I’m on my way, I’ll be there soon.” He was already bounding out the door without so much as a nod in his direction. 

Kaiba felt his stomach lurch with a loathsome pining pang at the familiar sound of Atem’s steps fading out down the hallway. 

“No discussing the exam!” Kaiba snapped at a few murmuring students who, admittedly, did not sound like they were sharing test answers. He pegged the butt of the chalk at the trash can, missing the mark, and the core of the white stick shattered on contact with the wall. 

Kaiba was never especially fond of grading papers but today the chore seemed a special breed of drag. He absently picked over the top booklet, conscientiously leaving a certain well wrinkled number on the absolute bottom of the pile. His brain was busy dissecting some social maneuvering that was outside his realm of expertise. For the first time this semester, Atem hadn’t stopped by for office hours before class.

 _There’s no homework, he’s been finishing your exam, moron._ The rational half of his brain supplied. True. He had still come to class…

 _Only because he had to and only to turn in the test._ This time logic proved more hurtful than helpful.

Atem. Distracted. Bored. Anxious to leave. Hating every minute he was trapped there. Hating Kaiba even more for keeping him there. _Hating Kaiba._   
  
And Kaiba. Ignorant for ever thinking he enjoyed being there. Gullible for ever falling for a single false smile.

When Atem handed him the test, his mouth was a straight line.

 _You’re blowing this out of proportion. It’s one day. Be reasonable._   
But the thoughts belonging to Kaiba were fading and the fragile innocence of Seto was taking over in their place.

So what if Atem needed to be somewhere else? Wanted to be somewhere else? To be with some _one_ else? It wasn’t that deep.

But perhaps it was, for the ground was soft and he was willing to dig. His vivid imagination, as wild as it was self-destructive, bit into the tender vulnerability and tore the flesh to pieces. There could be a thousand valid reasons for Atem to leave but his jealousy contrived a thousand and one versions of Atem in a thousand and one compromising scenarios with a thousand and one different people whose names were never Kaiba.

He shouldn’t have let himself get this attached to the situation, this whole thing was a mistake. Domino, the class, Atem--everything was a mistake. But how could it be a mistake when he’d at last found the perfect rival?

Atem was not a mistake.

It was killing him that Atem could just _leave_ him, the way everyone _leaves_ him, while he was chained in place. Always when Kaiba obsessed over something it was theorems swimming behind his eyes or opponents crushed in a flawless succession of cards but _Atem…_

Atem was the first _person_ he’d ever gotten stuck on. 

Now all he could think about was someone else kissing him. He couldn’t breathe because it was some ungrateful girl, she wouldn’t try to make it perfect.

He wanted to wake up tomorrow to find Atem in his office. To twist the knob shut behind them like the door on a safe. He wanted him to _come_ _back_. So. Bad. 

_Atem._

_c o m e b a c k_ _  
_ _Come back, Atem._ _  
_ _Come back_ _  
_ _comeback_ _  
_ _comebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomeback--_

Kaiba felt a mounting dizzy spell coming on, could hear the quick, shallow hiccups of his breath almost in third person, as though floating detached beside his own body. He collapsed into his second office chair. _A_ tem’s chair.

_Atem’s not coming back. He hates me. I hate me._

He was doing that thing he did, the one Mokuba constantly warned him about. Dissociation. Disorganized behavior. Spiraling thoughts. He might be better at noticing, but that didn’t make it any easier to stop. Not since Mokuba left him too. 

Kaiba took five long, slow, deep breaths and emptied his thoughts into a dumpster fire, feeling a slight, numb relief. He refused to look at the exams tonight and abandoned them on his desk in the office.

He kept the door unlocked.  
He left the lights on.

* * *

Atem played games, not sports. 

Despite his competitive nature, he didn’t possess an athletic bone in his body. He recalled his brief stint running track in high school where the coach’s best motivation was saying he could inspire the whole team with his effort since he was so small and unathletic. He promptly quit and joined the debate team.

His lacking ability, however, was a moot point to Seth, Shada, and Karim who’d successfully duped him and Mahad into riding the six-pack chairlift to what they insisted was ‘practically the bunny hill’ of black diamond slopes. Granted, after four years in the north this wasn’t his first foray in winter sporting, but Atem hardly considered himself an expert as the sign advised. 

At the moment, he could see Mahad’s lips progressing from chapped to blue as the temperature plummeted and they climbed in altitude. His purple-and-teal 90’s retro ski onesie was evidently not warm enough. Mahad tried to wear his parka overtop but Karim insisted it would ‘kill the drip’ which was never acceptable. 

Atem _had_ opted to wear his parka, which was shaping up to be a regrettable choice. He might have been warmer, but at the expense of the range of motion in his arms and thighs. With his face wrapped in a ski mask too, Shada teased that he looked like a mummy who’d be more at home in the desert than the snow. Atem thought there was more truth to the joke than intended. Coupled with the borrowed skis disproportionate with his stature, Atem was a precise olympic caricature. 

Clouds clung to the air, laying down a hazy fog of whiteout conditions and the pine trees faded to shapeless shadows beyond the grey curtain. The clang of metal as the ski lifts caught on the track echoed out louder and louder, signalling their final destination was imminent. With any luck, Atem wouldn’t meet his own final destination on the slope. 

There could be no running now. The lift bay was materializing just ahead beyond the snowy veil and suddenly Mahad made his nerves known when he clung to Atem’s arm for dear life. The trap bar swung open and the lift’s momentum carried them forward over the ice and out of the carousel. 

“Mahad…”

“No.” If the taller man continued to throw this fit he’d drag them both down before they even reached the start.

“Mahad you have to let go.” Atem struggled to jostle free but his friend’s grip was fierce. 

“There’s only one way down now,” Karim teased.

“I’m not going!” Mahad covered his face with his hands, no doubt smudging his holographic purple goggles, and releasing Atem in the process. The squad peered over the edge of the 45° freefall. Atem was gripped with renewed terror when he realized the sightlines were limited to only a hundred yards or so at best in the swirling snow squall. 

“Umm, maybe Mahad has a point. Doesn’t the lift run backwards?” He turned sideways to slow his slide forwards. 

“Not for us!” Shada chuckled.

“Yeah no wasting the lift tickets.” Karim said. 

Atem’s fears were not alleviated by his inability to coordinate the ski poles in his restrictive puffy parka. He floundered and duckwalked toward the edge beside the sleek and graceful trio of Seth, Shada, and Karim. Even Mahad seemed to have an easier time maneuvering despite his frenetic shivers. 

“I’m not going down.” Atem’s face was pouty behind the ski mask. 

“I didn’t bring you here to play the cowardly lion, I brought you here so I could kick your ass at downhill skiing.” Seth said.

“Wow, what a challenge…”

“Quit being such a little bitch and go already!” Seth was clearly growing frustrated. He dug his poles into the snow and skated over to Atem.

“Seth, No! I’m serious, I can’t move my arms! What the--?!” Atem was too inept to dodge. “ _No no no no no--SETH!!_ ”

With an abrupt shove, Seth sent Atem careening over the powder and his undignified squeals carried off the ridgeline. Evidently this was enough motivation to give Mahad the courage to follow, albeit with an abundance of caution, and the other three bolted off the block with a heave of speed. 

The run opened on a quarter mile straightaway, prime turf for instant acceleration and subprime for a novice desperately struggling to ‘pizza’ his skis to resist downhill gravity. The others hollered at his incompetence as they whizzed past on the piste, save Mahad, still following from a conservative distance with his switchback strategy. 

Atem managed to survive the first turn, but only because of the banked, easy curve. The next stretch promised to be worse, narrowing down to half the width coupled with a significantly steeper grade. Helpless against his own momentum, Atem whiffed the drift on the next corner and rocketed head over heels into the plastic guard fence, landing awkwardly on his right arm at likely 50 mph. 

He yelped at the pop and excruciating pain that erupted through his shoulder, lying in agony in a soft, fluffy snow dune. Luckily, Mahad witnessed the whole unfortunate affair and saddled up to the broken fence to fish him out of the snow bank. Atem whined and cursed as Mahad tried to wrestle him free.

“Fuck! Don’t touch _\--OW!! GOD!_ I can’t move my arm!” Atem surrendered on his back, the mountain top an odd place to behave like a beached whale. His clothes were too thick to sit up in and his shoulder in too much pain to let himself be pulled up. He moaned in self-pity. 

“ _Ya Haraam, habibi!_ Don’t worry. Just stay calm. It’s fine, everything is fine.” Mahad said for his own benefit more than that of the ski victim while he ripped off his mittens to dig for his phone. _Emergency calls only_ the screen promised despite the little x in the signal field. Mahad felt that ‘emergency’ was as apt a term as any for the situation and dialed 911. 

* * *

Friday night rolled around and when Kaiba returned home emotionally drained, exams ungraded, he noted how the usually rowdy frat house across the street was uncharacteristically quiet and several cars were missing from their parking spots on the lawn. It was peaceful. He wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. 

The storm had brought with it subzero temperatures at night and the condensation on the apartment’s drafty windows framed the paint-chipped sill with icy stalactites. A web of crystals formed even on the interior face of the panes. 

Kaiba pulled on his favorite soft blue sweatshirt with a majestic white dragon silhouette embroidered on the chest. It was a splurge from an amusement park trip with Mokuba, one he’d never be caught dead in outside the house. The drawstring was long lost to the wash and the cuffs were frayed from years of anxious toying and loving wear. 

He fastened his headset in place, set the battlestation RGB LEDs to his custom programmed ‘azure eyes’ mode to set the mood, and pulled up the meta monsters discord server on one screen and his Duel Links account on the other. The time difference meant it was noon on Saturday in Tokyo, so he stood a decent chance at getting paired in some almost challenging matches. 

Had Kaiba spent an exorbitant sum recreating his real-life deck in the gacha game? Potentially. But climbing the rankings every weekend by pulverizing lesser mortals into oblivion made every cent worth it. Tonight, there was only one deck archetype he was fixing to annihilate. 

His first opponent opened with Aleister the Invoker. Elemental sabers. Pass. He surrendered the duel and moved on.

Next guy must have sent and returned ten cards to and from the graveyard on the opening move. Masked heroes. What a fucking headache. Yawn.

He paired with three losers in a row running Amazoness decks and bailed on all of them, but not before flashing a middle finger emoticon.

Match five. Dark Magician. Finally. 

“There can only be one winner, and you’re looking at him.” Kaiba taunted into the mic. His enemy gave no reply, but that was better. It kept the illusion alive. 

He played Sage with Eyes of Blue in attack position, searching his deck for a copy of White Stone of the Ancients. Kaiba felt his pulse quicken as he put the nameless opponent through the paces of his opening gambit. 

He activated the Cards of Consonance spell and sent the dragon tuner White Stone of the Ancients to his graveyard. He closed the combo by activating its effect to summon Dragon Spirit of White to the field in attack position, and ended his first turn.

He was decidedly unsurprised when his challenger opened by playing the continuous spell Dark Magic Circle, immediately calling the Dark Magician to his hand. He summoned Magician’s Rod in attack position, this time pulling the trap Magician Navigation into his hand. 

Kaiba drummed his fingers against the table with impatience. Fine. Whatever. If it’s not broken don’t fix it but the opening was so stale and repeated. The cornerstone of any Dark Magician strategy. He wanted to play at least one magicians match with a little pizazz. Was that really so much to ask?

His opponent set two cards before his Magician’s Rod cleared Kaiba’s Sage with Eyes of Blue from the field, costing him 1600 LP. Meaningless. All part of the grand strategy. Turn ended, and the ball was back in Kaiba’s court again.

If this moron continued on the same train of pitiful predictability he could almost guarantee the two back row cards would be Magician Navigation and some trap-clearing spell. 

Kaiba’s obvious next move was to summon something to clear the back row or jam up the holy trinity of magician cards before they could be useful. He brought out Maiden with Eyes of Blue and tributed her and his Dragon Spirit of White to synchro summon a personal favorite (honestly anything Blue-Eyes was a personal favorite) his Blue-Eyes Spirit Dragon. 

He’d added this dragon to the roster just for how well it’s secondary effect shut down the ubiquitous Magician Navigation chain combo. Kaiba had easily played a hundred or more ranked competitive online duels against Dark Magician decks since that fateful day in his office where Atem uncovered his dirty secret: his addiction to duel monsters. 

Ever since, Kaiba had become a man obsessed with crafting the perfect anti-meta to any feasible Dark Magician deck that could be concocted, common or niche, vintage or top tier. On a few nights he’d sat up til dawn, hounding every opponent online and experimenting with chains of double-negative combo effects and outlandish sequences. He memorized every new string of moves he encountered, devising novel strategies to extinguish all of them. In every adversary, he imagined a spiky-haired phantom behind the keyboard.

Kaiba played Cards of Consonance again, discarding another copy of White Stone of the Ancients, bringing his Dragon Spirit of White back from the grave to his hand, and set a card facedown. His enemy’s Magician’s Rod was no match for Blue Eyes on the attack, costing his opponent 900 LP.

Of course, there was the problem of the circle and navigation to contend with now…

Navigation triggered to summon Dark Magician Girl from his deck on defense and Dark Magician from his hand, only to be immediately tributed by Magician’s Rod from the grave, triggering Dark Magic Circle. His enemy tried to banish his Blue Eyes with the spell card, but Kaiba activated Spirit Dragon’s effect, tributing her to special summon Azure Eyes Silver Dragon in defense mode, breaking his opponents chain combo and ending his turn.

Kaiba’s move. Another White Stone of the Ancients effect from the grave for a special summon and without further ado…

“Join me! Blue Eyes White Dragon!”

His original girl. In a twisted sort of way, Seto felt the powerful engine of destruction was his only life long friend. To be fair, very few had gotten close to his heart and lived to tell the tale.

Magicians guy simply filled the back row with another facedown card and ended his turn. Coward. All he seemed to do was lay traps and bide his time. Prepare for a beatdown.

Kaiba activated alternative evolution and his BEWD became Blue-Eyes Alternative White Dragon, banishing the helpless Dark Magician Girl from the field. His opponent’s field was left wide open, but leave it to a magicians player to have a spare trap up his sleeve. Kaiba normal summoned yet another White Stone of the Ancients and ended his turn.

On cue, his opponent triggered Cosmic Cyclone to attempt to clear one of Kaiba’s traps. Futile. That cost the fool 1000 LP, leaving him with a meager 2100. No match for Kaiba’s dragons with a combined attack total of 5500. This would be over soon enough. 

The card Kaiba had was Rygeki Break, and he activated the trap to rid the field of dark magic circle, crumbling the last pitiful piece of the enemy’s strategy. His opponent was left with one trap and no monsters on the field. A real Kobayashi Maru.

Kaiba liked to believe that even now, his imaginary vision of Atem was ingenious enough to still pose a threat.

He tributed Alternative Blue-Eyes and White Stone to synchro summon Vermillion Dragon Mech, almost as a taunt at this point, and used its effect to clear the final measly trap in the way of his victory. Majestic Azure Eyes dealt the coup d’grace. 

_GG_ was the loser’s only response before disconnecting. That shattered the illusion even more than the win. Atem ran his mouth too much to say something so ineloquent, especially when the duel wasn’t ‘good’ by any definition. 

Another disappointment. When every match opened, Kaiba was tempted with hope that maybe, _this time_ , his nameless adversary truly was Atem. With every victory, the spell of the fantasy was broken. The Atem of his imagination was too clever to be trounced so easily.

But that was all he was. A hollow figment of his desire. A cheap reproduction. The pale shade of his ambition.

Of course the _real_ Atem wasn’t playing online duel monsters matches like a man possessed on his Friday night. He was unreachable, unknowable, lost in some foreign world Kaiba was unacquainted with. Judging by today’s phone call, he was probably out on a date.

In his mind he watched some beautifully exotic Layla bint Mahadi tear off his shirt, saw Atem shiver as she pressed his back against the cold wall by his chest, heard him moan when her delicate, feminine fingers drifted below his waist…

It was an insulting analogy, really. Atem played a far more perfect Layla than any girl. 

* * *

_Ring Ring! Ring Ring!_

The old fashioned belltone Yugi set for his ringer, a joke about his technological incompetence, sounded a thousand miles away. The only thing that registered in the forefront of his perception was the splitting agony in his arm. Atem sat perfectly statuesque under the fluorescent lights, every tiny twitch he moved sent a white hot knife through his shoulder.

_Ring Ring! Ring Ring!_

Whoever wanted to reach him called twice in succession. Someone he absently recognized as Mahad pressed him back against the cold metal waiting room chair by his bare chest so he could reach into his pants pocket. He moaned in pain. They’d cut his shirt off earlier to assess the damage but being a tad chilly was the least of his problems now. 

“Not Yugi…” Atem whined. He felt dazed and confused from shock, but knew he didn’t want to worry his twin. Yugi and company had stayed behind to support Anzu, but if Yugi knew what happened, he’d insist on coming and there was really no point. Yugi wasn’t a doctor. “Don’t call Yugi…”

Mahad waved at him to shut up and answered the phone.

“Oh, it’s _you…_ ” Atem could only hear one half of the conversation.   
“The pharaoh and I are having a marvelous time just the two of us.” Mahad acted blasé but his sass was hard to hide.   
“Nowhere special, just Lake Placid General Hospital.”

 _WHAT???_ Seth’s yell was loud enough to catch from a few feet away.

“Calm down, Atem dislocated his shoulder after you pushed him.”  
“Of course I didn’t try to pop it back in, I’m not a doctor!”   
“Well then I guess it’s a good thing you weren’t there, the EMT said if you do it wrong you can sever the nerves.”   
“No they didn’t medevac us out, it was too windy.”   
“They sent some guy on a snowmobile.”   
“Yeah, it’s pretty gross looking. I don’t think the ride helped, we were bouncing all over the place.”   
“I don’t know, about an hour I guess?”   
“No, I didn’t tell Yugi.”   
“Because he told me not to!”   
“Seth… Seth, Please… Listen to me--”   
“I don’t think that’s necessary, the ER waiting room is full as it is.”   
“I was a little preoccupied.”   
“Well you could have called sooner, the phone works both ways!”   
“Yeah.”   
“Okay.”   
“Look, it’s a 25 minute drive. You do what you want, I don’t care.”   
“Screw you too. Alright, bye.”

Atem was too exhausted even to groan and released a stiff breath. He was struggling to remain patient in the face of ER doctors with better things to do than resolving his predicament. Seth’s draconian aura wasn’t about to make that any easier. He made the mistake of glancing at his own arm. The joint looked warped and unnatural under his skin, the ball of his shoulder sinking visibly lower from its intended position as time wore on. His stomach churned with nausea.

“Mahad…” His friend was seated in the chair beside him. “Distract me.”

“Do you want to watch a video? I can get you something to eat, I think there’s a vending machine--”

“No, just talk to me.” He pleaded. 

“About what?” Mahad was at a loss for how to rectify the situation.

“Anything. Something happy. Tell me about Mana.” Atem gave a soft, wry smile despite his excruciating condition.

“Why do you want to hear about M-Mana?” Mahad’s usually stoic exterior crumbled with a stutter. “She’s your friend, we can just call her instead, if you want...” He pulled out Atem’s phone again, hovering his finger over the pink contact affectionately labelled ‘Mana Pixie Dream Girl’.

“No, I don’t want to call Mana. Tell me why you fell in love with her. Tell me when you knew.” Perhaps it was cruel, but Atem thought now was an opportunity to take advantage of Mahad’s sympathy. Normally he’d grow shy and flustered, insisting that Atem was seeing things that weren’t there, but Mahad would hardly deny him anything he asked for in his current state of suffering. 

<< _Wallah_ , you’re such a little snake…>> Mahad casually fell back into his native Arabic as he was wont to do when it was just the two of them, especially when discussing something emotional or complicated. Atem was happy to indulge him. 

<<I know. You still love me.>> He shot a reassuring glance at his friend who was shifting in his uncomfortable chair. Mahad looked nervously around the room for judging eyes but no one seemed to be paying them any mind.

<<Mana is too sweet and beautiful, _Ma sha allah_... It is rude that I should betray her kindness by feeling this way.>> This is how he always started. That’s Mahad, always playing the martyr. <<She’s just being nice.>>

<<I don’t think Mana sees it that way…>> Atem let out a delicate chuckle and winced in pain. 

<<Do not give me false hope. It will only make things worse.>> Mahad looked at the floor. Atem disagreed with his helplessly oblivious friend, but he could certainly relate to the sentiment. His expression shifted to a happier, albeit bashful, one when he continued. 

<<I like her handwriting. I like when she calls me Mahaado.>> He blushed. <<You know, she only signed up for Arabic because she forgot to register on time and there was no space left in French. French! Can you believe that?>>

<<Some might call that destiny. Fate.>> Atem said. He liked this story no matter how many times Mahad told it. He was so passive, it was as passionate as he ever got about anything besides fighting with Seth.

<<She was so terrible at first, I couldn’t read anything she wrote. She used to scribble little hearts instead of _i’jam_! It works a lot better for Latin i’s and j’s. She was so cute when she cried, so scared she’d fail. I didn’t have the heart to charge her for tutoring.>>

<<She’s more fluent than me now, though.>> Atem said.

<<She’s an eager learner. She never gives up.>> He sounded proud.

<<Maybe she has a good mentor.>> Atem smiled at Mahad’s humble dismissal.

<<I thought she’d move on after one class, I’m still not sure why she didn’t. She’s improved so much in four years.>> Mahad sighed. <<Once a week we meet for coffee and only talk in Arabic. I told her to keep a diary, but it was her idea to exchange letters instead. I’d correct them and write one back for her to read. They weren’t very interesting, in the beginning. She just wrote things like ‘Today I ate blueberry pancakes for breakfast.’ or ‘It is raining. I don’t like rain.’>>

<<I don’t know how you could stand that for no pay.>> Atem tried to ignore the pain by staying engaged in the story.

<<They got better, though, as she got better. She started writing about her thoughts, her feelings. Secrets. I suppose she knew that no one else would be able to read them. Each letter is special. I keep them all, I still have every one.>> He reflected seriously on the memories. <<She’s so self-conscious, she thinks people see her as another dumb blonde. Once she wrote ‘I’m tired of knowing nothing and being reminded of it all the time’ and it broke my heart!>>

<<Mana knows so much! She sees the sorts of things that most people miss.>> Mahad seemed distraught that other people couldn’t see her the way he did. <<It’s easy to spot the dark in things, but Mana lives with eyes of rose. She can only ever see the sun. That’s what I wrote back, but I think the structure was too complex. I don’t think she could understand. I think it was then, though. I think that’s when I fell in love with her.>>

Mahad was so loyal, so honest, in everything he did. It made Atem feel warm inside just to hear him reminisce. 

<<She’s perfect.>> He sounded more self-assured. <<To me, that is love. To be blind. I can find no fault in her.>>

Atem scrunched his nose in dissatisfaction. Yugi had said something similar about Anzu. He couldn’t help thinking of Kaiba, and when he did, ‘perfect’ was the last word that came to mind. Every minute around Kaiba was a challenge. He was brimming with infuriating faults and he never gave anything away for free. But he loved it. Or at least he thought he did. Perhaps his dissonance with Yugi and Mahad should be read as an omen afterall… 

<<Only you, Mahad, would come to America just to fall in love in Arabic.>> Atem said.

<<Who wants to fall in love in English? It sounds so ugly!>> Mahad laughed. <<Lately, our coffee ‘dates’ have started to feel like real dates. I can’t help it. Taking to Mana feels like being home.>> Mahad said wistfully. 

<<Maybe they could be real dates, if you asked her.>> Atem encouraged, but Mahad looked positively terrified at the thought.

<<Mana is too good a friend. I’m not sure it’s worth the risk to be so selfish…>>

As if on cue, Atem heard a familiar voice squabbling with the haggard nurse manning the check-in desk before entering the waiting room.

“Look what the cat dragged in. Typical. You’re only a friend until you need to be a friend.” Mahad hissed, his tone always more stern and cold in English.

“Climb off your horse, Mahad, I’m here now aren’t I?” Seth grabbed an extra chair and sat down in the wrong direction, straddling the seat with his arms flung over the back rest. “How are you holding up, pharaoh? Did they at least give you some pain killers?”

“No.” Mahad answered for him. “They said only the doctor can do that. It’s a new hospital policy because of the opioid epidemic.”

“God, why do you have to be such a push over all the time! Did you even _try_ to argue?” Seth was livid. “Look at him! He’s about to pass out from shock!”

Seth made a deliberate racket when he threw the chair aside and stormed back to the check-in desk.

“What the fuck kind of operation are you running here! How long has this man been left untreated? Two hours? Three?? This is unacceptable!” Seth had every eye in the waiting room on him except that of the old maid, who looked decidedly unfazed. She licked the pads of her acrylic-clad fingertips and turned the page on her issue of Cosmopolitan. 

“Is he dying?” She drawled.

“No, but he is experiencing undo suffering and you will be receiving a letter from my attorney regarding this hospital’s gross malpractice if he is not given interim treatment this instant!”

“All you pill seekers and your fake emergencies sound the same. Take a seat.” Her voice was as placid as the mountain lake.

“Fake emergency?! His arm is _visibly separated_ from the socket!!” 

“Is that your professional medical opinion?”

Seth gave a grievous groan before pulling out his wallet and speaking in a more hushed tone. “Look. Fine. I will pay you for your… _expediency_ if we can see about speeding this process up.”

“You think you’re the only one from The Hamptons in this ER for a ski accident tonight? It’s called triage, you can pay in patience.” She nodded over her reading glasses back to the waiting room. Seth stormed back with steam practically boiling off his head.

It must have been something about weekends because it was 11 PM before Atem was finally seen for treatment, and he insisted his friends be allowed to come back with him. There were no open rooms, so he was assigned a gurney in a busy hallway. It was only a nurse who came by at first. She poked and prodded his arm in several torturous ways before she confirmed that his shoulder was, indeed, dislocated (as though it weren’t immediately evident by visual inspection) and wrote some notes on a clipboard before leaving, giving no indication as to when the doctor might come around. 

More time passed, and Atem in his advanced stage of suffering clammed up into absolute silence, lying flat on the thin, uncomfortable foam board. Seth had taken to snapping at every odd nurse who happened past the unfortunate trio and Mahad gently apologized on his behalf for every outburst. 

At last, around midnight, a doctor came by to see Atem. Sort of. It was a resident, but at least he was eager to try his best. He sat Atem up on the table, causing him to moan in pain, but he set to howling as soon as the young doctor struggled to move the arm back to its proper position. He spent several minutes twisting and turning from every angle, before surrendering with a sigh. 

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” Seth balked. Mahad simply looked disgusted and tired. Atem, glassy eyed and exhausted, didn’t look much of anything at all. 

“I’m sorry, Atem.” The doctor addressed him directly, ignoring his friends. “The bone has drifted significantly out of place in the time it's been out. I might have had an easier time sooner after the accident.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Seth cried.

“I’m going to give you a few CCs of diazepam and fentanyl to relax your muscles some, I’ll be back when it takes effect but you will feel a bit--”

“High, we know! Like he should have been hours ago!” Seth was boiling over on Atem’s behalf. The resident gave a tired sigh and patted Atem on the knee before leaving. Mahad flashed a sincerely apologetic smile and thanked him as he walked away. 

Atem was drifting, first in pain and then further removed from his body as the drugs started to take effect in his system. Mahad and Seth were having another altercation, but it was beyond his power to care. Absently, he recognized he was still in pain, but somehow it was beyond him to care about that either. He felt rather at ease now, apathetic to the whole affair, and his muscles seemed to release their hours of tension without his order to do so. He didn’t much care for the idea of talking or moving. 

He couldn’t be sure how long it was before another doctor came by, but Seth seemed relieved so he must have been an older doctor, not a resident. He introduced himself, but Atem couldn’t be bothered to remember his name. He sat up again, this time the doctor instructed Seth and Mahad to hold his hands and support his back while he gingerly inspected the angle of the detachment. Slowly, he lifted the arm to a horizontal position and into a rolling circle motion before Atem could feel a practically orgasmic click of relief when the bone resettled properly into the joint.

“Uuuggghhhhh…” He groaned in immense satisfaction and his friends lowered him back on the table. The doctor gave a happy chuckle. 

“Yes, I’m sure that does feel better. Rest as long as you need to. The nurse should be around with a shoulder immobilizer and your discharge paperwork soon.” He left without much ado to tend to the ER queue, which was still impossibly long despite how late it was. 

Atem must have drifted off briefly, but when he woke up he still found himself in a very pleasant dream. He was in a bed that wasn’t his own that had scratchy sheets and reeked of disinfectant, but that was beside the point. Resting near his knee was a peaceful tuft of sleek, chestnut hair and a set of long, nimble fingers. Tanner then memory served, but none of this dream logic scenario made sense to begin with. 

“Kaiba?” He furrowed his brow in confusion. “Did you… Come to bring me back?”

Atem was feeling rather uninhibited and reached over to intertwine his fingers with those he’d been yearning for. The spell was broken when the impostor bolted upright.

“Who the hell is Kaiba? I’m _Seth_. Did you hit your head, too? Get your hands off me you little fungus!” He shivered in mock disgust.

“Oh, right. Sorry. I don’t…” Atem felt vaguely cheated. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Must be the drugs.” 

Mahad pretended to cough to hide his laughter. 

* * *

Kaiba woke up before dawn on Saturday morning. He slept miserably, but that wasn’t unusual. His anxieties wouldn’t allow him the comfort of dawdling under the sheets, or in his kitchen while he made his first cup of coffee, or even on his frigid walk to the math building. He was facing down the door to his office before the sun rose.

The abandoned room looked like a crime scene, the light still pouring out from under the door. He didn’t really want to touch it, but he did, turning the knob and stepping inside. Kaiba refused to run away from his problems.

He turned on the electric kettle for a second cup of coffee and shed his coat before getting comfortable behind his desk. He procrastinated getting started, pretending to thumb through a diverse selection of red pens until the water was ready. Baby steps. 

Coffee prepared and bloody instrument selected, there was no more avoiding the task at hand. Grade the exams. Then he would be free to drown his miseries in his real work. He began from the top.

His reputation for ruthlessness preceded him but even Kaiba recognized his point deductions were exceptionally ruthless today. Why did some of them bother to waste his time with half-assed mediocrity? They would have been better off simply leaving the question blank. 

Grading bad work usually took an exceptional amount of time, but Kaiba wouldn’t bother with corrections or dithering over point values for this exam. His mood was far too bitter. Today he meant to inflict pain and on Monday he’d post an answer key for the wounded to cry over. 

Finally he reached the final blue booklet. It was crinkled, the way paper got when handled one too many times, with an appendix of extra work stapled into the back cover. Atem’s exam. 

Kaiba stood up to prepare a third cup of coffee. That way, if his hands were a bit unsteady with the pen, he could always reassure himself it was merely the caffeine to blame. Perhaps Atem would fail miserably, and in his disappointment Kaiba would be free of the whole agonizing curse of yearning that he’d never asked for and his life would regress to his comfort zone. His fickle traitor soul found room for hope he wouldn’t. 

Atem had already correctly answered the first question by beating Kaiba’s own time at the 4x4 Rubik’s cube. He was starting at 20/100 points and working up now. Already, that was more than could be said for some members of the class.

Question two was by far the easier of the written questions, but he had to include some low hanging fruit. They built to the difficulty of question five, which he expected no one to get. He planned to throw it out in the curve so he could use it’s solution as a starting point for the next segment of the course. This assured the class would have given it adequate thought and effort beforehand.

On question two, all he asked for was proof that the square root of two was irrational. Atem showcased his supremely lazy attitude and wrote a three-line proof by contradiction. Completely valid. Virtually meaningless. Still, somehow wholly Atem to find the quickest route to the answer and scribble it down as if to taunt _Why are you wasting my time, Kaiba? I thought this was meant to be a challenge._

Kaiba rebutled in red: _There are 207 unique ways to prove the square root of two is irrational. You chose the least elegant. I know you can do better. 5/10_

Atem had no trouble solving the Josepheus problem, first by algorithm for the specific case and then formulating a general rule for the general case. 

Kaiba was a bit ashamed to admit that yes, he had in fact included question four purely out of curiosity for what Atem would do with it after he’d fielded him the challenge of the three classical problems. He didn’t disappoint. Atem was the only one in the class to fully construct the Lune of Hippocrates, the critical intermediate required to understand the inherent issue in squaring the circle. A few others had earned partial credit, but their efforts were hardly worth remembering. 

The final question. This one he honestly hadn’t selected with the intention to tease Atem, but it could certainly have been taken that way. The answer was buried in his smart-ass commentary on their first day discussing Euclid in class. How fitting that he would surely fall for the trap. Kaiba smiled in anticipation. 

_Prove: Given a line and a point not on it, at most one line parallel to the given line can be drawn through the point._

This was evidently where Atem had burned through the expanse of extra paper stapled to the back of the booklet. All manner of drawings and writings were scribbled down there and crossed out again. Whatever he was about to read, clearly Atem had put a lot of thought into the answer. 

For all the effort, the ‘proof’ attempt was reasonably short and clearly defined as most good proofs tend to be.

_This statement is false. I will instead prove the converse by counterexample to the original statement:_

_Given a line and a point not on it, there exist infinitely many lines parallel to the given line that can be drawn through the point._

_Let us recall the definition of parallel as stated in Euclid’s fifth postulate:_ _  
_ _If a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles._

_Lemma 1: The two curves of a hyperbola are parallel._

_First, consider a hyperbola obtained as a conic section. If we construct the line AB, the line connecting the foci, the interior angles on the same side form two right angles. And, by earlier result of Apollonius, we note that when extended indefinitely, the curves of a hyperbola do not share an intersection._ _  
_ _  
_ Here Atem had included a small construction illustrating his point.

_Lemma 2: A hyperbola is a straight line._

_Let us recall the definition of a straight line:_ _  
_ _A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself._

Kaiba remembered Atem complaining that this particular definition was nonsensical during his office hours once. Fitting that he should attack it now. 

_Now, consider the straight line AB constructed in the 2D plane which we name “Atem’s Printer Paper”_

Kaiba groaned inwardly. This had become a running joke between them. Early on, Atem had so many questions on mathematical naming conventions for writing up clear, proper proofs and Kaiba had mistakenly teased that he should go ahead and name things whatever he wanted, that someday he might be responsible for naming something more important than a mathematical figure and he might as well practice now. Cue the endless non-canonical naming conventions.

_Let us also consider the appropriate transformation carried out by bending the sheet of paper, resulting in a hyperbolic saddle shape. The line AB now meets the requirement for the definition of a hyperbola. As line AB lies in the plane of “Atem’s Printer Paper” AB also lies evenly with all points on itself, thus remaining a straight line by Euclid’s criterion._

_Excuse me?_ Atem was invoking the third dimension to make his argument, which was not something Kaiba had remotely planned for when drafting this exam. They hadn’t discussed any math that happened outside simplistic flatland. 

_Now, consider the line CD constructed in the plane “Atem’s Second Piece of Printer Paper” and let E be a given point not lying on the line CD. By Lemma 2, we can bend “Atem’s Second Piece of Printer Paper” such that CD is a hyperbolic line. We then construct the line AB such that it intercepts point E and lies in the plane of “Atem’s Printer Paper”. Again, by invoking Lemma 2, there exist an infinite number of unique transformations that can be applied to bend “Atem’s Printer Paper” making AB a hyperbolic line. By Lemma 1, hyperbolic lines AB and CD are parallel._

_Thus, given a line and a point not on it, there exist infinitely many lines parallel to the given line that can be drawn through the point._

_Author’s Note: Such bending is not uncommon, and would be observed in any line drawn on the surface of a curved figure, like a ball. Or, of notable interest, the Earth._

_QUOD ERAT FUCKING DEMONSTRANDUM!_

Or, in other words, _there’s your fucking proof!_

It was stubbornly crude and hardly elegant, mostly because he lacked the proper mathematical language for what he needed to say, but by damn Atem had spoiled his perfect trap problem. Atem, endlessly clever Atem, had essentially reinvented non-Euclidean geometry by simply proposing to _bend the paper through a higher dimension_ , as if it were the most obvious solution in the world. 

Kaiba loved it. Not only was it brilliant, non-traditional, and entirely obnoxious but it screamed everything topological. He also quite enjoyed the ‘tombstone’ and thought he might borrow it for his next publication. 

His mind ran a gauntlet of emotion. Fury at being bested at his own game. The thrill of enjoying a clever argument. Pride that Atem was _his_ student, had never been anyone else’s.

And pining. Because it made him think of Atem. Heartache. Because Atem was his student, but he wasn’t _his_. 

Kaiba picked up a green pen instead of a red one: _Good job. 10/10_

That was the first time he’d ever written that on anyone’s paper. 

He heaved a forlorn sigh and looked over at his chalkboard, still covered with some of his thesis work from Wednesday, left unerased. Something caught his eye that hadn’t before. Nestled deep in a proof draft between a set of curly braces, the empty set symbol has been erased and replaced with a rotund little drawing of a familiar face. _Consider the trivial case of the set containing kuriboh_ the nonsensical argument now read. It was a dumb joke, but the weak fluff ball that did ‘nothing’ really was enough of an unassuming trouble maker to play the role of the empty set. 

Kaiba smiled. Only Atem…  
He dared to believe perhaps he wasn’t so forgotten afterall. 

* * *

As promised, Seth sacrificed his Saturday lift ticket to drive their one-armed paper-hanger back to campus. Atem groggily woke up around noon, sitting upright in an unfamiliar arm chair, hung over from a long night of benzos and dissociative analgesia that had no tie to any party. He watched Seth hastily repacking both their belongings, cursing under his breath while he looked for Atem’s car keys. Several minutes wore by before he was caught staring and the pain in his shoulder was building for every one of them.

“Oh. You’re awake. Eat this.” Seth barely slowed down to hand him a glass of water, a banana, and two little white pills.

“What are these?” He tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, but everything just felt off with his non-dominant hand. He wouldn’t bother attempting the banana. 

“The resident wrote you a script for some hydros, try not to spend them all in one place.” Seth walked outside to carry their bags to the car.

The two of them were the last ones in the cabin, everyone else was probably having a good time on the slopes. Atem almost felt bad that Seth would miss out. Almost. But all this _was_ loosely his fault. Maybe Atem still would have wiped out without the push, as Seth insisted, but that’s not how it happened so no one would ever know. 

“Hurry up, Pharaoh, your chariot awaits.” Seth was already locking up the house, rushing to get a move on and avoid driving at night with all the ice on the road. They didn’t need two accidents in one weekend. 

The drive stretched out in a peaceful, easy stillness. Seth wasn’t much for small talk and Atem was grateful for their persevering ability to coexist in companionable silence. Despite their enduring rivalry over the fraternity’s presidential election and although Seth couldn’t be pushed to admit it over his own dead body, his cousin truly was his best friend along with Yugi and Mahad. 

Well, being a twin came with special privileges but if his Aibou was Atem’s heart, Seth and Mahad were his left and right hands. Unfortunately, his right arm was crippled at the moment so Seth would have to take his role a bit more literally today. 

There was no highway that cut a straight shot back to the university. The drive took them on and off a number of scenic state routes through several frost-laced forests and antique villages trapped in a snow globe beyond the car windows. The metronome windshield wipers tapped out a soothing, rhythmic beat and for a long while Atem was merely content to drift in his own thoughts while the world passed by around him. 

Alas the safe house of Atem’s private mind had been compromised recently and there was nowhere left to hide when the intrusive images of Kaiba inevitably returned to prowl around. He was still sour over the fact he couldn’t make his office hours on Friday morning and would have to wait days to see him again. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours, Monday morning felt a lifetime away. 

What was the greater torture, he wondered. Being near Kaiba, in all his caustic glory, doomed to look and never touch? Or pining over Kaiba from the passenger seat of a distant car, certain his mind was fixated on anything or anyone but Atem?

Imagining things without any facts was counterproductive at best and could turn completely delusional if he didn’t stop now. He called off his romantic spirit’s haunt and resolved to talk to Seth instead of booby trapping his mind with some negative feedback loop. 

“Seth, can I ask you something?” Atem cautiously broke the silence.

“Hmm.” Acknowledged, but only just. His eyes remained fixed on the road. 

“Do you…” Atem swallowed in anticipation. “Do you love Kisara?”

“Of course I love Kisara!” Seth sounded extraordinarily offended and the car swerved briefly onto the rumble strip when he whipped the wheel. “What kind of moronic fucking question is that!”

“No, I wasn’t trying to imply that you didn’t. I was just asking becau--”

“Does this have something to do with that weird shit at the hospital? Because I swear to god, Atem, if you think for even a second…” Seth didn’t finish the implication, it felt too wrong to say out loud.

“No! Ugh, gross, stop, it’s not about that! Okay, well, it’s kind of about that but not like _that_! Who do you think I am? Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I chase everything with a dick.” He pouted out the frosty passenger window. 

“Could have fooled me, you slut.” Atem had known Seth long enough to recognize his ‘kidding’ tone even if his sense of humor was bone dry.

“Whatever. I was only trying to ask about Kisara--”

“Why do you care all of a sudden? We’ve been together for years and you’ve never asked about her.” Classic Seth, blunt and confrontational. 

“Can’t we just talk like normal people for once?” Atem was already growing frustrated. This really was a terrible idea after all. 

“I don’t even know what you’re trying to talk about! Quit beating around the bush!” 

“I’ve been _trying_ to tell you but you won’t let me finish!”

“I will now, okay? I’m listening.” He huffed and anxiously toyed with the shifter. 

“Fine. I only wanted your advice, I don’t know, just, like, your opinion or something.” Atem mumbled, sinking further into the seat and propping his feet on the dash. 

“ _About?_ ” Seth bit out. He wasn’t exactly known for his patience. 

“Seeing people…” 

“I don’t know, Atem, you certainly ‘see’ a lot of people. Not sure why you need my advice, I’d say you do pretty well for yourself.” Seth said.

“For more than one night.” Atem felt like the dentist was pulling out his teeth.

“You’re asking me about love.” Seth looked positively devious when he turned away from the highway to watch him squirm. 

“Sure. Fine. Whatever. Call it what you want.” Atem’s face was already burning. He tried to cross his arms as a reflex, and hissed when he wiggled the injured shoulder. 

“Atem’s most feared four letter word…” Seth practically cackled to himself. “Come to think of it, you haven’t had any… _conquests_ this semester. This ‘Kaiba’ must be one hell of a guy to have you so jacked out of shape. Why not ask Yugi and Mahad?”

“Don’t you think I tried them first? They weren’t very helpful…” Atem grumbled in embarrassment. 

“Tsk, obviously they wouldn’t be.” Seth rolled his eyes. “Fine. Go on, ask. I won’t laugh. Promise.”

Atem sighed. He felt ridiculous asking someone as stone cold as Seth about something so… soft. He thought back on what Mahad had said last night in the ER.

“Do you think she’s perfect?” Atem dreaded getting the same answer.

“Kisara? _Perfect?_ What, did you smoke crack for breakfast or is that some shit Yugi says about Anzu?” Seth seemed genuinely amused and smiled to himself at some private joke. “She’s pretty easy on the eyes but incase you failed to notice she’s also a raging fucking bitch.”

“Seth, how can you say that! What the hell is wrong with you!” Atem shot up in his seat. That answer had really come out of left field.

“You asked me if Kisara’s perfect. She isn’t.” He shrugged. “But that doesn’t mean she isn’t perfect for me.”

“You just called your girlfriend a raging bitch.” Atem was still flabbergasted.

“Yeah, and? So what if she is? That’s what I like about her. She’s intense, I don’t waste time on cute or easy.”

“That’s not…It isn’t…” Atem wasn’t really sure what he was quite trying to get at.

“Are you of all people really about to tell me that’s not what I’m supposed to want? Fuck off.” Seth scoffed.

“Stop putting words in my mouth!”

“You were thinking it.”

“You don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Yeah I do because that’s what Yugi and Mahad would say and you spend way too much time listening to those losers. They always want to call the wambulance after every little disagreement. ‘Oh me and Yugi _always_ agree on _everything_ we’re sooo perfect together that Seth and Kisara they’re sooo toxic!’” Seth mocked imaginary Anzu, but Atem couldn’t really disagree with the caricature. Besides, it seemed the topic had struck a poignant nerve and evidently Seth was looking to rant. 

“Spare me the fairytail before I vomit. Your brother couldn’t see his own codependence if it punched him in the face. Perfect my ass. I’m a fucking adult. Kisara’s a real fucking person. She’s allowed to have opinions and shit. Sometimes we argue. Big fucking deal! Everyone argues unless you’re fucking a goddamn doormat! I still _love_ her! She’s the only one that doesn’t lie straight to my fucking face!”

There was subtext about his father buried in there somewhere but Atem didn’t mention it. He didn’t try to stop him when he lit a cigarette with the windows still up either. 

“She has a life! She’s not super glued to my fucking hip! I still have friends! What do they know about me and Kisara? Nothing. And it’s none of their goddamn business.” 

Seth took a long drag and calmed down a few volume levels. 

“Look, Atem. All I’m trying to say is don’t let anyone tell you what love’s supposed to look like, alright? Especially not Yugi and fucking Mahad. Stop worrying about what your friends will think and worry about what _you_ want for once.”

He shook his head and lit another death stick off the end of the first one, still de-escalating his nerves. Emotional outbursts were a staple of his repertoire, but not usually ones so personal. 

“Thanks, Seth.” 

Atem felt surprisingly more uplifted than after his talks with Yugi and Mahad. Seth wasn’t exactly delicate but he was certainly... insightful. Maybe they only argued so much because they were too alike. 

“Yeah, whatever. Just keep it to yourself, alright? What you want, I mean. I don’t need to know whether you top or bottom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Part of Kaiba’s meltdown is based on Neil Hilborn’s famous spoken-word poem [OCD](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnKZ4pdSU-s)  
> [not implying Kaiba has OCD here, he’s just a very anxious and traumatized softboi in this fic and this poem tears me to pieces]
> 
> Kaiba references the Arabic folktale [Layla and Majnun](https://ums.org/2016/09/23/the-story-of-layla-and-majnun-the-idealization-of-love/) often called “The Romeo and Juliet of the East” It’s a double entendre because the name ‘Layla’ means ‘Night/Dark’ just like ‘Yami’
> 
> Numberphile has a fun video on [The Josephus Problem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCsD3ZGzMgE).
> 
> [Playfair’s Axiom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playfair%27s_axiom) returns to haunt us from an earlier chapter, this time with an answer. This phrasing of Euclid’s parallel postulate is designed to highlight the issues that bring about [Non-Euclidean Geometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Euclidean_geometry), or as Atem aptly notes, geometry on surfaces that _aren’t_ flat! Here’s a [short lecture video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFVxzjRckPY) if you want to understand problem five and the hyperbolic space Atem crudely attempts to visualize for his proof.


	6. Pure Nash Equilibria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This was supposed to be done on Sunday: A Dissertation
> 
> Sorry for the lack of math puzzle, nerds. The real math puzzle was the angst we found along the way.

On Monday, Kaiba arrived early to his office at five minutes to six only to find Atem already waiting by the door. His heart swam in his stomach when his student startled at the sound of the jingling keys and whipped around with a warm but tired smile. He’d grown far too intimate with Atem’s reluctant early bird face.

“Morning.” Atem greeted in a sandy voice. 

“It is.” Kaiba unlocked the door during their standard exchange. He flicked on the lights and the electric kettle beside his own coffee mug and its mysterious newfound companion which had appeared some time ago when he hadn’t been looking. The soft hum of the rising boil lent a soothing white noise to the comfortable atmosphere and Kaiba shed his coat before settling himself into his chair. 

He looked back at Atem shutting the door with an unpracticed left-handed motion and finally noticed something was amiss. Despite the lingering frosty weather, Atem had on a black tank top that afforded an appreciable view but also accommodated a bulky sling, too big to fit through any sleeves, strapping his right arm down across his stomach. His blue jacket was slung over his shoulders like a cape to keep him warm. A few key elements from his usual menagerie of gold and leather trappings were missing as well, evidently unable to put them on with only one hand. He bent down to fish something out of his bag.

“What the hell happened to you?” Whatever the reason, the sight of a hapless Atem on his knees, fumbling with a zipper while partially bound and tied shouldn’t have been as erotic as it was. He felt filthy for memorizing the image, his mind would grasp at any straw for fodder these days.

“Sorry, I’m not left handed…” Atem tried to hand him some illegible chicken scratch he thought might pass for homework. 

“Don’t think I have time to waste slogging through this. You have twelve hours to type it up in LaTeX instead.” Kaiba said and Atem groaned as if the thought of some minor coding was akin to waterboarding. For his technological ineptitude, it probably was. Kaiba was surprised he managed to work a cell phone. “I’ll try again. What, exactly, is your pitiful excuse?”

“Ugh, don’t ask...” Atem grimaced at the memory. “I dislocated my shoulder skiing, didn’t even get to finish one run. Got stuck waiting _hours_ to have it fixed, I was stranded in the hospital until one in the morning… Doctor said it’s not really serious, though, I can take the immobilizer off in a week or so.”

A ski trip.  
Atem had left early...for a ski trip.   
Probably with those dweeb lord friends his brother associated with.

He spent Friday night in the ER, not on a date.

Kaiba felt simultaneously relieved yet still bitter with his own notorious anxieties and he snapped back at a blameless Atem.

“A _ski trip_? I’d just assume you’d be off with your little girlfriend.” The words fell out sounding callous and he immediately regretted the jealous comment. It was difficult to explain away even as a joke.

“Girlfriend?” Atem seemed marginally offended and a mite amused. He gave Kaiba a befuddled expression, as though he had missed something obvious. “Do I...look the ‘girlfriend’ type? Because that wasn’t exactly the air I was aiming for.” He chuckled lightly. 

Was Atem trying to brag about being some sort of noncommittal playboy? Because the bleached hair and the eyeliner and the pound of gold jewelry screamed flamboyant more than anything else--

_Oh._

For the second time today, Kaiba felt too oblivious to deserve his own prodigious reputation, so caught up in his own hand he’d neglected to see what his opponent played. This development added a whole new and complicated facet to the chess match of their every interaction. His mind raced to reassess the nuance in every shared moment. For all his precisely calculated hypothetical conjectures, he’d never accounted for the variable that Atem would be in the position to reciprocate. 

Kaiba’s hesitation was a beat too long for innocence and evidently his thoughts were written in bright red all over his face. Caught. He wanted to melt into the floor with embarrassment under Atem’s wicked expression. His student’s tongue and teeth subtly grazed his own lips while his eyes remained transfixed on Kaiba’s mouth and _oh god,_ Kaiba might not be fluent in flirtation but he’d have to be blind to need a translator for that message. 

This exact scene had played out in Kaiba’s imagination a thousand times since the start of the semester but none of those pre-recorded responses would be appropriate in the face of the real thing. In fact, the instant-replay of every gloriously explicit ending was making it monumentally difficult to play the responsible move now. 

Atem. Splayed helpless over his desk. Pinned against the board by his chalk-dusted hands. Bronze legs draped over the chair with his lap in between. Crying into the floor from the carpet burn on his knees. 

He tried to swallow but his throat had gone dry and he let out a small strangled cough. 

"Kaiba, are you feeling alright?" He asked with obvious sarcastic concern. "If you need my... _help_ all you have to do is ask..." Atem shot a look that was nothing short of devious. It was so uncomfortably forward that Kaiba was flooded with a wave of self-doubt. 

No way this was sincere. Atem was mocking him. His heavy garnet eyes were dripping with vanity and he wanted nothing more than to slap the insulting smugness off his face. Everything was a game to Atem, and this was the first time Kaiba was seeing that for a fault. He was sorely mistaken if he thought Kaiba would bare his emotions on the table to ante for the hand.

He wouldn't be taken for a naive fool. If Atem thought toying Kaiba with his brash flirtation was just a good rib it was exceptionally cruel, even from him. 

"That's rich coming from you." He glared pointedly and crossed his arms in defense. Atem blew past that red light and stepped over to Kaiba’s side of the desk to lean casually against the ledge, a direct invasion of his personal space. Kaiba coiled in his seat, ready to strike Atem's next remark down with spiteful venom.

"Is that really so hard to believe? And here I thought we were becoming _friends_ …” He leaned in closer from above and Kaiba's discomfort gnawed at him for being trapped in the subtextually submissive seated position. 

"We aren't friends!" He snapped and bolted up to his full height, towering over his foxy antagonist who didn't so much as flinch at the reversal. 

"Who says we couldn't be?” Atem stole another inch of space ignoring Kaiba's bold text body language that screamed for him to back off. 

He could hardly be sure of the full implication in those words but he was certain they were no longer discussing mere friendship. He placed no faith in Atem’s guileful attention, too well matched to fall victim to his golden schemes. It was coming, any moment. The trap.

_‘You can't think I was serious, Kaiba! Me? Want you? You really are pathetic…’ Atem would look appalled, give a sadistic laugh._

Trust no one. 

“Who said I wanted to be!” Kaiba's rage was simmering hot beneath the surface and his voice was already beginning to quake. “Why would I have any use for you?”

"Is it truly such a foreign concept that we might simply appreciate each other's company?” Atem’s voice dripped with seduction and he almost allowed himself the weakness of belief. Kaiba refused to be so gullible and the heartless tease was about to rip him apart at the seams. Why did everyone in his life have the power to be so malevolent?

“Don't waste my time with your pointless little Nicomachean speeches! I don't need friends!” Kaiba's voice was void of any patience and drove Atem a step or so back. It was hardly a surrender, but he followed to fill the space. 

“Such inferior character, I'm not sure what I expected.” Atem scoffed, genuinely taken aback, but further escalated his goading. “Of course you'd view friendships for utility, for what they can give in return! I should have known.”

"Why do you insist on harassing me every morning when it's obvious that _I WANT YOU GONE!_ ” If it weren’t so early, he’d worry that someone in the hall would be privy to every word, he was practically frothing in Atem’s face as he drove him back all the way against the board. 

“GONE?!” Atem’s playful attitude evaporated and his outrage boiled in full view. “Is _that_ what this is supposed to mean? What did I ever do to you!"

“Why don't you _ever_ know when to SHUT UP!" Kaiba wailed.

“DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” Atem seemed determined to be louder as if volume were a necessary element for victory. “What am I to you? Some weird hate proxy for whoever fucked you up this bad?” 

“I said I've heard _enough_ of your pathetic ramblings!" Kaiba felt practically unhinged and the fleeting thought of Gozaburo must have been enough to betray his fury for pain for the briefest instant. Atem had one hell of a mean streak himselF after everything Kaiba said and saw the opening to bury the knife in.

“I’ve had _enough_ of your impossible narcissism, Kaiba!” Atem struck the match that lit the house on fire. “Everyone thinks you’re some pompous, overbearing asshole but you’re even worse than that! You’re just a sick, twisted little boy all bottled up and rotting!”

“DON’T ACT LIKE YOU KNOW ME!” Kaiba slammed his hands against the board in deranged frustration on either side of Atem’s head. 

“WHAT’S THERE LEFT TO KNOW? YOU’RE FUCKING INSUFFERABLE!” He was close enough to feel the heat of Atem’s coffee breath on his face when he yelled and it was disgusting. But his hair looked softer up close and his clothes smelled like incense and fresh coriander and the volatile, carmine rage in his eyes that Kaiba knew he’d put there made him hate himself, not Atem. But that’s not what he said. 

“JUST STOP IT! STOP! PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SHUT THE FUCK UP!!” 

Atem fisted the collar of his shirt right under his neck with his only good arm to drag him down to eye level and if it weren’t for his injury they might already be throwing hands. 

“WHAT THE HELL IS _WRONG_ WITH YOU??” Atem’s voice was growing hoarse from screaming and his expression was wild with white-hot fury but even now he ached to _touch_ and it was all falling into frame, inches away, close enough to see the red rings of his eyes when Kaiba...

“ _I HATE YOU!!_ ” 

...said something ugly. 

“ _I HATE YOU TOO!!_ ”

Both voices rang through the morning stillness until the vast chasm that cracked open between them flooded with uncomfortable silence.

“Kaiba, I...” Atem at last capitulated, the first to release his hand, looking sufficiently dejected and browbeaten.

“I think you should go.” Kaiba said softly in the most deadpan and professional voice he could muster. He let his arms fall back to his sides and backed off towards the door.

“Kaiba, I don’t hate you.” Atem whispered. His eyes were clearly damned up against an impending flood of tears, which should have made him feel either victorious or guilty, but it was only turning his temperature up another ten degrees to imagine them falling from a far more pleasurable pain.

Atem had to leave. Now.

“GET OUT!!!” He flung the door open with such force the knob cracked against the cinderblock on the outside, echoing through the hall. 

When Atem regained his composure his face was stern and prideful.

“Gladly.” The word was glacial and he stormed off without looking back. 

Kaiba was shaking with nervous energy when he slumped down into his chair, willing himself not to cry. Atem was a liar. Atem was his student. It was the right thing to do. 

Doing the right thing should have been a victory, but Atem had a way of making everything feel like a loss. 

* * *

_In Game Theory,_ _Metagame Analysis_ _involves framing a problem situation as a strategic game in which players try to realize their objectives by means of the options available to them. The subsequent mathematical analysis of this game gives insight to possible strategies and their outcomes._

Atem dragged his bruised ego down the main campus quad, kicking his boots at the little pebbles on the concrete, indifferent to whether it might scuff the leather. He’d squandered all of Sunday night deliberating over the assets and disadvantages of making a move on Kaiba. 

The glaring tension between them was a miserable war of attrition and while the goal might be to outlast him at his own game of indifference, strategically there was a real cost to be paid in dragging it out. 

Time was passing every day. Would it even be worth it to wait for the end of the semester? It was the risk-dominant move, to hold out until they were no longer bound by the student-teacher dynamic, but the payoff would be all but lost. By then, Atem would be graduating and probably leaving Domino. He wasn’t sure he could stomach the torture of waiting anyhow.

Atem had a careful read on people; he never played games he couldn’t win. On the first day of class he’d worried that Kaiba wouldn’t be interested in men, but that fear was quickly assuaged when he caught on to how little time Kaiba spent looking him in the eye. For all his icy demeanor, subtlety wasn’t his strength. 

In Atem’s long trail of subjugations, this was his only battle where his advances were met with rejection. Kaiba was different. Clever. He had him pinned down in unfamiliar territory and new tactics were in order to reclaim the upper hand. It was the only victory he truly cared to claim and ironic that it should be the only one ever in question.

_‘I hate you!’ Kaiba cried, but his blue eyes looked more anguished than angered._

The open wound from the words was still fresh and leaked grief in his chest. Perhaps he had misread the situation afterall, projected his own desires so hard on Kaiba’s actions that he only saw what he wanted to see and had ruined everything by saying it outloud.

No. He refused to surrender to the belief it was just imagination. There lay a Daedalean labyrinth behind the way Kaiba looked at him every morning, arguing about everything and nothing over a cup of coffee. Which version of Kaiba was trapped in the center? Perhaps it was Theseus. Perhaps it was the Minotaur. 

Everything was a game with Kaiba, even this, and he never gave away easy victories. If he was going to beat a mathematician, he’d have to think like one.

The winner takes it all.

_Cheap Talk_ _ : Communication between players that does not directly affect the payoff of the game. Providing and receiving information is free, in contrast to signaling where messages may be costly for the sender depending on the state of the relationship. _

Atem twiddled his thumbs in his seat, waiting for Kaiba to come to class on Wednesday. He’d skipped his office hours. He still wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe there was nothing left to be said. 

He didn’t like that ending. It made for a lousy story.

Kaiba milled around in the hall until the precise top of the hour, slamming the classroom door shut behind him when he finally entered. He’d originally promised to return their exams last week, but had the stack in his hands now and his mood was a foreboding omen. Atem swallowed the lump in his throat, hoping that Kaiba wasn’t sadistic enough to change his grade after _the incident_. This was exactly why romantic pursuit of one’s hot-headed teacher was considered ill-advised.

He carelessly tossed the papers on the podium and started scribbling on the board without a word of greeting. He drew a bell curve, crossed with standard deviation lines and wrote down a few statistics. 

“Median score was a 20. Mean score was 25. Standard deviation was 22.” Kaiba slammed the chalk on the board tray. “One of your classmates ruined the curve. You should thank him, because I will be grading on a square root curve instead now. If I didn’t, only five of you would be passing. The new mean is 50. Median is 45.”

“Before the curve, The low score was a 0. The high score was a 95.” The class gasped and murmured with shock but Kaiba remained expressionless and he didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “I caught three of your classmates posting the exam questions in online forums. They’re already being thrown out of this university as we speak. Learn your lesson from example.” 

Kaiba handed Atem his paper last, flung on his desk like some contemptible garbage that was burning a hole through his hand. He refused to so much as glance in his direction.

Atem opened to the final problem. _Good Job. 10/10_

His heart ached so hard he felt nauseous. Of course Kaiba wouldn’t change the grade.  
It didn’t mean anything now, though. The time for those words had passed.

_The Princess and The Monster_ _ : A two-player pursuit-evasion game. The monster, supposed highly intelligent, hunts the princess in a dark room. The princess strives to maximize the time until she is caught. _

Kaiba prided himself on being a man of strict discipline and routine, leading a life streamlined to optimal efficiency. His time and mental energy were far too precious to be squandered on trivial decisions and unpredictable circumstances. 

He woke up at 4:30 every morning, regardless of how late he stayed up, to go for a run on his memorized 15 km street circuit. He bought the same brand of coffee. Everything in his wardrobe was purchased in cross-compatible shades of white, blue, black or navy. He followed the same path to his office, timed between 13 and 17 minutes depending on the crosswalk light cycles. At 2:30 PM he left for his first afternoon coffee at his habitual cafe and again at 5:30 PM to stave off the hunger for dinner. He cooked once for the whole week on Sunday, choosing from one of three pre-ordained utilitarian meals and ordered out twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays with the same order from the same two restaurants.

Precise. Comfortable. Familiar. His routine left his mind free to wander more important topics and easily afforded two or three extra hours a day to reflect on his work. 

That was, at least, until his homeostasis was so rudely perturbed. Call it coincidence or call it the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, but ever since _the incident_ Atem was everywhere. 

It began that Tuesday. At 5:24 AM per his standard run pacing, Kaiba passed the infamous Marianne’s Patisserie only to spot two spikey haired twins and their obnoxious blonde compatriot queued up for the notoriously quick-selling powdered doughnuts. Atem even had the audacity to wave. He ignored him.

Kaiba rerouted his run path two blocks over for the future, which ruined his precisely measured circuit and rendered his new and old run times slightly incomparable.

On Thursday, Kaiba arrived at the only 24 hour coffee shop on campus at 2:30 PM for his standard afternoon order. Every table was full, but there was an open chair at a two-person high top by the window. Atem waved. He ignored him. And ignored him again at 5:30 PM and at 2:30 PM on Friday too.

The next week, Kaiba ran a Mathematica script to choose a new randomized afternoon coffee trip time every day. Completely unpredictable. 

On Friday night, Kaiba stopped by his habitual hole in the wall chinese restaurant, two blocks up from his apartment, for his regular order of silver noodles. Yugi Mutou was on a date with a mirror in the first booth by the door. Atem waved. He switched his order to takeout. 

On Sunday, as Kaiba always did on the third Sunday of the month, he went to the grocery store to buy the next month’s supply of coffee. They were sold out. Of everything in the usual brand he kept in his office. He threw a fit with the stocking clerk. She profusely apologized, assured him that it was a rather unusual circumstance--someone had come in and bought them out of all of it just yesterday. She advised trying their store on the other side of town or waiting for the delivery on Tuesday. 

On Monday morning, en route to his office hours, Kaiba spotted a short and tightly bundled figure furiously slamming the crosswalk button at the intersection up ahead. Atem looked up and waved. He turned the corner on the first alley he saw. Six extra minutes of commute time. 

Kaiba was a sheep in wolves clothing, stalling for time he didn’t have. 

_The Stag Hunt_ _ : A ‘trust dilemma’ first proposed by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau where a pair of individuals can choose to hunt a stag or a hare, but not both. A stag is worth more than a hare, but the kill requires both players to set aside their pride and work together. _

Atem loved the rain. 

He loved the patter pricking the roof at three in the morning. He loved when the pressure fell and the wind picked up his hair before it all began. He loved the smell in the parking lots after the storm drifted away.

Atem hated being _in_ the rain.

With a unique disdain for early March, where every pellet stung like tiny frozen bee stings and the damp and the cold soaked through to the bone. Hated it in the way cats hate taking a bath. He didn’t care for being wet.

He was in the lobby of the math building after Kaiba’s class, pleading for a respite before he was forced to brave the elements to reach Advanced Latin on time for his presentation of _On Moral Ends_. He’d brought an umbrella, but it was of little use. He couldn’t even open the push mechanism with one arm bound in the sling, and he couldn’t carry it along with all his books. He fumbled with it anyway.

“It’s raining.”

Atem nearly jumped out of his own skin with a start. Kaiba was staring wistfully beyond the glass doors as the sheets slipped over the windows. 

“Perceptive.” He said with a snort. He took another look at Kaiba, who looked woefully underprepared for the turn of the weather. Shocking, truly, since he seemed to live out of a trench coat.

“It’s at the dry cleaners.” He answered the obvious question looming in the air. He was wearing a white button down, which did not bode well for his unfortunate position. “I have a meeting in the dean’s office in ten minutes.”

“You don’t have an umbrella?” Atem teased.

“You do.” Kaiba looked over expectantly. 

“Yes, and it’s my umbrella, a one person umbrella, and I’m keeping it so I can get to my presentation on time.” He was still locked in hopeless battle with the contraption.

“You can’t even open it.” He was about to start laughing at him any moment.

“If you were polite, you’d offer to help, but that’s a big if.” 

“What’s in it for me?” He quirked an eyebrow. Par for the Kaiba course. 

“I will entertain the idea of possibly offering to share.” Atem said.

“Ridiculous, it’s too small. If you were polite you’d offer to let me borrow it. My meeting is obviously more important and you can’t even use it.” He rolled his eyes.

“Then I guess I’m not polite because I’m not giving a 30 minute presentation in soaking wet clothes.” Atem spat. Kaiba could be unbearable when he set his mind to it. 

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Silence fell between them in the otherwise vacant vestibule, marked only by the sound of the wind whipping the water over the sidewalk outside. A minute ticked past. Kaiba checked his watch. He moved to grab the umbrella from Atem.

“Hey!” He snapped.

“We can try.” Kaiba said.

“What?”

“The sharing thing. We can try.” He begrudgingly offered. 

Atem caved. That was a genuine effort from Kaiba, even if it was for his own self benefit and even if he couldn’t be trusted not to run off with it himself. He opened the umbrella with ease.

“It’s bad luck to do that inside, you know.” Atem said.

“Luck? I’m the one who decides my fate, not some antiquated umbrella fairytale written by batty old fools in a sewing circle.” Kaiba led them outside under the awning, holding the door for Atem. He hadn’t betrayed him yet. 

Atem pulled his coat closer against the wind, spray beating into his face.

“You’re too tall!” He grabbed Kaiba’s arm holding the umbrella and pulled it down.

“Ow! You’re too short! My spine doesn’t bend like that!”

“Then squat down!” Atem said. 

“How the hell are we supposed to run like that?” Kaiba pushed his bangs back in exasperation. “Let’s just get this over with...”

He pulled the umbrella down as close over their heads as possible, faced it into the wind, and wrapped one arm around Atem’s waist to smash them both together around the handle. The curved end dug painfully into his ribs, but Kaiba was warm. He smelled of coffee, old wood, and too much time spent indoors. They made a break for the main building, which was only a few hundred yards away.

It was an uncoordinated chaos of limbs knocking limbs and hip bones bruising tender flesh and novel contact that was over all at once both too quickly and not quick enough. They arrived under a parallel awning, unscathed and mostly dry. 

Atem’s face warmed up when he realized Kaiba hadn’t let go. He looked humiliated once he caught on, shoving the umbrella into Atem’s hands and darting into the building without a word.

“You’re welcome!”

_The Sheriff’s Dilemma_ _ : A sheriff faces an armed suspect, either a criminal or an innocent civilian. Both must simultaneously decide whether or not to shoot the other. A Bayesian game in which players possess incomplete information about each other’s payout and must act instead on beliefs about their opponent’s motivations. _

If Kaiba was angry spotting Atem in the cafe at the high top table by the window alone every afternoon, words could not encapsulate the unbridled rage that gripped him on the day Atem was at the table _not_ alone. 

He was with another guy.

Some tall drink of water, all oasis eyes and desert skin, cashmere camel peacoat and gaudy golden earrings. Undeniably attractive and eerily familiar in an unplaceable way that made him feel _wrong_ for finding him attractive. 

On the insistence of some masochistic instinct, Kaiba ordered the drink off the menu that looked the most time consuming to prepare and sat down at a table within earshot and outside of Atem’s line of sight. He faked scrolling through his phone.

“Are you enjoying your little favor, pharaoh?” He sounded...mocking? Teasing? Flirtatious? Was that some sort of pet name he had for Atem?!

“I appreciate the gesture, Seth.” Atem’s deep voice gave a hearty chuckle. Seth. His name was Seth. _Fuck_ Seth. 

“How do you plan to compensate me for my generosity?” Who the hell was this guy to Atem?

“It’s not a favor if you require payment.” Atem’s voice was impossibly esoteric, not just in this moment but all the time. The meaning in his intonations were so multifaceted you could read everything and nothing into them. Kaiba chose to imagine every worst case scenario. 

“I’ve given you enough free favors lately, I’m not Mahad. And don’t say the coffee. This hot bean juice tastes like piss and bitter almonds, I’ve had better at--” He grimaced in disdain. “ _Starbucks._ ” The coffee tasted fine. Kaiba drank it two or three times a day. This guy was a pretentious asshole. What on Earth could Atem probably see in this waste of oxygen?

“I pay you with the pleasure of my company.” Hadn’t Atem said something like that to _him_ before? 

Kaiba. Hated. Seth. 

“If I had a dime for every time you used that line I’d throw them at the proles because I’m already fucking rich.” He sure drank a lot of coffee for someone who claimed to hate it. Kaiba watched him casually pull back his sleeve to flash his IWC Schaffhausen. Oh piss off, you’re not navigating a goddamn bush plane with a sexton... “You have me for twenty more minutes, better make them count. Where is your green-eyed monster anyway?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know~” Kaiba could almost picture the Atem-esque wink that went along with that line and it made him sick. He had no idea what they were talking about anymore. 

“Whatever, I’m not even going to pretend to care about your little boytoy--” Seth was cut off by Atem’s hand over his mouth. Atem pulled his hand away...seductively?

“Shut up, just let it happen. Please? Don’t make a scene, you’ll ruin it. It’ll all have been for nothing.” He said. Kaiba had heard more than enough. His blood was boiling and he was ready to abandon his unnecessarily complicated latte with the barista. 

“Cut it out!” Seth’s temper flared, Kaiba wasn’t sure why, maybe just a short fuse. “How hard is it for you to be normal for five fucking seconds!”

Kaiba felt his own anger skyrocket under his skin. Who the hell was he to yell at Atem like that? Sure, Kaiba yelled at Atem but that was _different_. He’d never tell him to stop being himself. 

He could confront Seth, but the consequences of a loss here were far too costly to accept. Play the safe move. Mitigate the risk. 

Kaiba weighed the conditional scenarios in The Atem Predicament. 

Did Kaiba want Atem? Without a doubt.   
Did Atem want him? Reply hazy, try again.   
Did Atem know that Kaiba wanted him? Signs pointed to yes.   
Did Atem think that Kaiba thought that Atem wanted him? That might be possible.   
Did Atem know that Kaiba knew that Atem knew he wanted him? Cannot be predicted. 

This could go on forever. Guessing was futile, nothing was common knowledge.

Where did this ‘Seth’ variable fit into all that? Were they fraternity brothers? Friends? Atem seemed to have a lot of friends. Lovers? Oh, _please_ don’t let it be that... More than a matter of jealousy, he couldn’t respect Atem for being with someone that vapid.

Nothing was quantifiable without this answer.

The only winning move was not to play.  
Kaiba stormed out of the coffee shop.

_The Hawk-Dove Game_ _ : A conflict where the outcome is ideal for one player to yield for both to avoid the worst outcome, but individuals try to avoid it out of pride for not wanting to look like a ‘chicken’. Each player taunts the other to increase the risk of shame in yielding. _

Kaiba was relieved when Atem started returning to his office hours again after his brief hiatus, but the reunion dissolved into another minor feud almost immediately. 

“Just admit it, Kaiba, you missed me.” 

“I felt so miserable without you it was almost like having you here.” His sarcasm ran like simple syrup.

“Don’t you yearn for a certain _amusement_ only I can provide?” Atem drawled.

“You’re right, I _am_ in need of something only you can provide--your absence.” Kaiba faked being absorbed in re-grading the same sheet of calc homework for the third time in a row.

“You’re impossible. I really can’t understand you.” Atem had been at whatever this game was all morning and was growing genuinely vexed. 

“As we’ve observed countless times in class this semester, a lack of understanding has never stopped you from arguing before so why start now?” 

“Kaiba! Do you even realize what I’m saying or does your ridiculously overinflated ego always blind you to the truth!” Atem was seething with frustration. They were having another one of those spats where they said one thing but meant another.

“ _My_ ego! You’re one to talk!” Kaiba traded another blow. “Quit stalling! You always make these pointless speeches when you’re trying to put off saying something! Just say it!”

“I do not stall! You say it! You never say anything useful!” Atem had stormed over to his side of the desk again.

Were they really talking about what he thought they were talking about? _Should_ he say it? Or maintain plausible deniability?

Kaiba would sooner jump in front of a speeding bullet train than surrender any ground to Atem.

“Has your visit been as catastrophically successful as you hoped it would be? Can I have my peace back now?” Kaiba shut his eyes and rubbed his temples.

“Amazing how you have all the powers of speech but none of conversation.” Atem spat.

“And you’re wasting my time with a conversation about nothing. Come back when you have something worthwhile to say.” Kaiba shuffled the papers on his desk, signaling the game was over for today. 

Atem slammed the door on his way out. 

* * *

“So who is he?”

“Who’s who, Mokuba? You know I hate when you do that.” Kaiba absently stirred the stock pot on the defective apartment stove and kept his phone lodged between his ear and shoulder. He’d been forced to answer after his brother called for the third time in a row. 

“Don’t play stupid.” Mokuba sounded peeved. “You’ve been acting weird for weeks now. Last Monday when I called you were acting all ‘woe is me’ and you’ve been broody and emo ever since.”

“I don’t ‘brood,’ I’m not sixteen anymore.”

“You didn’t even reply to my meme texts!” Maybe Kaiba had been ignoring Mokuba some, but he had other problems on his mind...

“I’ve been busy with work.” That was more of a half-truth than an outright lie.

“Yeah, _sure_ you have. That’s why you never talk about it and why you keep playing all your old scene-n’-scream high school angst music on spotify. It’s embarrassing. I mean, you know how to shut off public sessions, right? And it usually takes two seconds to get you riled up about what’s bothering you but it’s not working which means it's a secret! You promised we’d never have secrets, Seto!” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A mediocre deflection, but his brother was almost as sharp as he was and anything else he said might reveal too much. 

“So then I thought what could possibly change in eight weeks to make my brother an even bigger over-emotional airhead, what could possibly be so incriminating that he has to lie to his own little brother about it?” Now Mokuba was playing the guilt card and laying it on thick. “The only answer is that you have a crush on someone!”

“I don’t get ‘crushes’ Mokuba. I'm not a middle school girl.” Kaiba almost caught his own fingertip with the knife on the cutting board, but managed not to convey his surprise in his voice. He was grateful they weren’t on videochat. 

“That sounds suspiciously well-phrased to dodge the question.” 

“There wasn’t a question.” Damn it. One was coming, though, and he hated lying to his brother, even about stupid little things.

“Yes, there is! Are you interested in a guy, _yes_ or _no_?” Mokuba was clearly losing his patience and overflowing with excitement the way he did on mornings Kaiba promised to take them to the amusement park. 

Silence.

“ _SETO!_ ” Mokuba whined. 

“Sure. Fine. Whatever.” He knew he wouldn’t be able to weasel his way out of this one. Better to cut the loss and regroup on higher ground.

“I _knew_ it!” Mokuba squealed with delight. Kaiba sighed. His peace was all but dead now. He set the phone down on the counter so his brother couldn’t scream in his ear. “What’s his name? Where’d you even meet him, you never leave your office! Does he have an Insta? VSCO? TikTok? I want to see a picture, I have to be the judge! Is he a grad student too? What does he study? Seto, I’m so happy for you!”

“Don’t be. We had a fight. He hates me.” Kaiba kicked moodily at the underside of the kitchen cabinets.

“Bro why are you like this? You’re being melodramatic.” Mokuba laughed at his expense. 

“This discussion is over.” Kaiba was seriously contemplating hanging up the phone but he knew he’d never outlast his brother in a frivolous feud.

“Not until you give me his name so I can stalk him online. I get veto privileges.”

“What? No way! That’s not a real thing!”

“It was real last summer when I was dating that smoking hot French girl!” Mokuba was using his childhood ‘that’s not fair’ voice.

“You were seeing her brother at the same time!”

“Heh, damn right I was.” The troublemaking little imp snickered.

“MOKUBA!!!”

“Stop derailing the conversation and give me his name!” His brother was certainly persistent.

Kaiba mumbled into the receiver.

“What? I couldn’t--”

“Atem Mutou...” Kaiba growled out, praying that his brother’s scrutiny would kill him quickly.

“Weird name. Is he Japanese too? The last name sounds like it. Oh, found him! Darn, guess not, he’s really tan...” 

Kaiba heaved a sigh and buried his face in his hands, struggling not to entertain the impending antics. 

“Oooh, he’s so _edgy_ Seto! I bet that’s your type.” Mokuba teased. “He’s totally short! Could be fun I guess. Those arms though, nice hands, very delicious... Does he play cards? I bet you’d like that too. Flexing with the cropped chinos and the Comme des Garçons collab converse, a little basic but I can dig it. Oh my GOD he did NOT he actually has one of those chain biting pictures, that’s so embarrassing. Remind me why do you like this guy again?”

“Are you done yet?” Kaiba felt like he was listening to a dog show commentary. Obviously he had already seen all of this and felt rather personally attacked. He’d secretly saved the chain picture to his phone.

“He’s pretty hot though if you’re into the whole dark douchebag light bdsm look, nice choice overall. It says he’s a fraternity president though! Are you sure he’s not too cool for you? You should go crash one of his parties some time!” Mokuba said.

“There’s nothing cool about surrendering to your baser instincts with a bunch of low IQ simpletons and I will do no such thing.” Kaiba angrily splashed the cut up vegetables into the stock pot.

“That’s what parties are for though, meeting new friends and hanging with old ones. Not that you’ve ever been to a party to know, but it might be good for you, bro.” Mokuba was getting on his last nerve.

“Playtime is over, Mokuba, I’m hanging up.” Kaiba winced internally. When had he started using that phrase? It was something Atem always said...

“No wait! Seto, Seto, Seto! Don’t go yet!” His brother gasped with excitement. “You’re gonna love this, I found his blog.”

“What? He doesn’t have a blog, it’s probably his twin’s.” He hoped Mokuba ignored the subtle implication that he’d already wrung out everything he could from social media. He refused to admit that out loud. 

“You’re losing your touch, bro.” He sounded extremely proud for besting him at anything technological. “It’s anonymous, it’s not associated with any of his normal usernames and his real name’s not anywhere on it. No pictures of himself or location information either. He made one tiny slip up though. There’s this aesthetic picture of some food stalls in Cairo in an advertisement for the Domino University study abroad program attributed to one ‘Atem Mutou’ and if you reverse-image search it the first posting of the picture online is on this blog!”

“What does it say?” Kaiba tried not to sound too curious. Fine, there was a chance it was Atem’s blog but it was still a questionable association at best.

“Most of it’s just stuff about ancient Egypt and these weird long text walls with big philosophy words. As if anyone cares, they don’t have any comments. Like, who’s he even writing to?” Nope, it was definitely Atem’s blog.

“I take it back, maybe he’s not that cool afterall. Looks like he might be the perfect compliment for your brand of weird. I mean, does anyone really read your proofs?” Mokuba liked to prod whenever he could. 

“I have a niche following in the topology community...” He protested. His brother ignored him.

“That’s not all he has though, oh this is too good...” Mokuba was laughing hysterically to himself, exceptionally pleased, but keeping his brother guessing.

“What is it?” Kaiba had all but forgotten the soup on the stove top, stewing too much over what Mokuba wasn’t reading him.

“Here, this post’s from last Monday. Isn’t that when you had your... _lovers quarrel_?” Mokuba snickered. 

“ _Just a boy who never was a man until I saw your blue eyes crying, and I held your face in my hands. Then I fell down yelling, ‘make it go away!’ Just make your smile come back and shine just like it used to be. Then you whispered, ‘How can you do this to me?’ Hate me today, hate me tomorrow, hate me for all the things I didn't say to you. --_ I think it's maybe cringe lyrics or something, I don’t know, guy doesn’t seem like much of a poet but still.” 

“You think it’s funny to read me shit about him and some other guy?” Kaiba snapped.

“Bro, has anyone ever told you that for a smart person you’re really, really dumb?”

* * *

The best distraction from a game you're losing is to start a new one where you're winning.

At least that's what Yugi claimed when he dragged Atem to Thursday night trivia at _Nat 20!_ with their regular cast of characters. He couldn't say he was in the mood. The week had been long enough already, wrought with disappointing turns of conversation, and he was quite content to spend another evening drowning in his own sea of melancholy.

But his twin had a peculiar gift for empathy, and after a heavy dose of bar food and camaraderie his prescription was proving effective. Atem lightened up a bit. After the first round, their trivia team, _Charge of the Friendship Brigade_ (so dubbed by Anzu), held a secure lead. They usually put on a good performance, and regularly won the victory prize of a free round of beer.

Jou was always reliable for sports trivia and between Mai and Anzu pop culture was rarely a challenge. Ryou never let them down on anything historical, and the more unusual the trivia the better. Honda's engineering brain was great on science, save for biology, but Shizuka made up for that if she wasn't busy with her pre-nursing study group. Otoogi surprised them with how artistically well-informed he was, although it always came through in his game design. Atem was an encyclopedia of anything spoken or written in the history of man, and Yugi never ceased to surprise them with his knowledge of critical grab-bag questions. He never betrayed the faith they placed in him for final jeopardy.

Suffice to say, they had their bases covered.

There was, as expected, the recurring problem of dragging Ryou out of his dungeon of dragons and into the public eye. He was a supernatural attractor point of unwanted female attention. Of course, Jou and Otogi found this to be an enviable quality but the man himself would sooner crawl under the table and hide out for the remainder of the evening before playing the center of attention. He squeezed into the middle of the booth flanked by Honda and Atem but there was really no patented effective thot repellent.

“Ryou~" A flouncy fae flew up to the table. This is why it was dangerous to give them your name. "Fancy seeing you here tonight. “Do you come here often?”

"Oh ummm... h-hello there, umm..." Ryou bumbled and squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. His quirky charmed necklace and inside-out shirt evidently did not possess enough protective magik to hold the folk at bay. She bent over the table to steal from his fries. "Would you kindly remind me of your name?”

“How rude of you!" She played the image of the distressed damsel. "I think you owe me a hug, wouldn't you say~?" Her eyes were mischievous when she leaned over the table, and half the group could see down her shirt. 

“That's quite kind of you, but--" Ryou attempted to placate her, but it was Atem who came to the rescue. He threw one arm around the hapless prince and grabbed his chin with the other, turning his face away from the girl and inches from his own. 

"But I don’t think he's interested." He threw her a gratuitous wink. Ryou’s face flared an ombre of rouge and his harasser stomped off in humiliation, mumbling something about ‘unfairness’ under her breath.

"A-Atem I-I-I’m f-flattered r-really b-b-b-but--”

Mai busted into peals of tearful laughter. "She's gone, you can release your prisoner now!”

“Just a bit of misdirection, that's all. Promise.” Atem chuckled, giving Ryou a pat on the shoulder, who let out a deep sigh of relief.

"Atem, you're so difficult to get a read on. Sometimes even I'm not sure whether or not you're being serious!" Yugi said. "Not everything is a zero-sum game you know." 

“Not everything..." Atem blinked slowly at his twin. “...is a zero-sum game?"

“Yeah. Just because someone else is winning doesn't mean you're losing. Some games you just play for fun!" Yugi laughed. Anzu was laughing, too. Smiling and laughing in a way that made him suddenly feel guilty. They looked happy. 

Was that really what he'd done to Kaiba? Made him feel like this was just a game, that he wasn't being serious?

To Atem, it was never ‘just’ a game. That's what no one seemed to understand. Games, to him, were larger than the usual benign variety. They were like a religion. They were terrifying. No one ever wanted to play with him.

Except for Kaiba. 

He felt like a coward, always playing hands from a deck of non-definitive acts, everything streaming out the wrong way. He wanted to do things right for once. He wanted to do it now. 

"Hey, where do you think you're going, there's one more round left!" Jou complained.

“There's something I’ve got to go finish." He smiled to himself. "I might be home late.” 

"Don't stay out too long!” Yugi called after him, but he was already on his way.

Atem was feeling quite emboldened when he left his friends, but somewhere on the walk between the brewery and the math building what little liquid courage he'd consumed fled his body and now his heart was hammering in his chest. He circled the empty hallways on the ground floor three times, cursing himself under his breath.

This was a stupid idea.

It was after eleven at night now on a Thursday. If his early riser tendencies were anything to go on, it was unlikely Kaiba would be in his office at this hour to begin with. Even if he were, he'd probably slam the door in Atem's face. He never accommodated visitors outside his preordained office hours, and it wasn't as if Atem had any reasonable excuse to be there.

Was this too much? Would Kaiba think he was a stalker for showing up in the middle of the night? It was his office, not his apartment... Truthfully, it sounded like something Kaiba himself would do so Atem figured it was hypocritical if he got mad. Still, it was apparent that his earlier advances had been too forward and that made him doubly hesitant.

Kaiba was a kind of wild stallion. Powerful and hot-tempered, but he spooked easy. Fast, but fragile on his own feet. Given an endless field, he wouldn't know better than to run himself to death. 

He demanded a gentle yet confident approach lest he trample Atem at the first sign of distrust.

_You just want to break him and ride him._

Atem groaned at his own lewd thoughts and beat his head against the cinder block hallway wall to clear it. No, if that's how all this began the truth wasn’t so simple anymore. Not the whole of it, anyway. Kaiba deserved so much more than that.

He drew a lungful of air and marched up the steps to the fourth floor. One rational corner of his brain assumed there would be nothing waiting for him. His heart was unsurprised to find the light leaking out from under the door.

He checked his phone. 11:54 PM. The bell was tolling, and it tolled for him.   
Atem summoned all his fortitude and knocked. 

"PEGASUS!" Kaiba shouted from within. "If I have to tell you one more goddamn time not to come by at this hour I swear to god--”

Atem took that as an invitation to open the door. 

The lighting was different than he kept it in the morning, the white-blue fluorescents traded for the warm, incandescent light of a desk lamp. Easier on the eyes at night. Clearly necessary, because Kaiba wore a set of reading glasses which he self-consciously snatched off when he noticed who was in the doorway. 

"What do you think you're doing here?" He lashed out immediately, as expected.

“Nothing. I--” Atem wished he'd rehearsed a response to that, but he honestly wasn't sure of the answer himself.

“Do the words of ‘office hours’ mean anything to you or are you too dumb to read a clock!" Kaiba was snappy, but all bark and no bite because he didn't make to get out of his chair.

Atem let his eyes wander the room. Evidently he’d caught Kaiba in the middle of a very private hour and the view of the office was an uncomfortably intimate intrusion into his thoughts. It was a complete manic degeneration of how he remembered it, every surface littered with a chaos of red-pen marked-up literature. There was hardly a path on the floor that wouldn’t disturb the spilling stacks. Empty paper coffee cups made nests for themselves in all the spaces in between.

The board was covered with diagrams of exotic shapes he didn't have names for alongside a warped facsimile of Kaiba's usually precise handwriting that made his skin crawl with anxiety and distress to look at. The author's eyes packed two purple suitcases of insomnia.

“Are you even listening? I said get--”

"I want to play a game!” Atem blurted out. That shut him up.

They'd been playing games constantly before, a round of everything he kept on the shelf and repeats of favorites, but not a single time since... Well. Kaiba was quiet for a long moment before he answered in a softer voice.

"It’s late." He finally addressed his midnight caller who still hadn't crossed over the doorway. He seemed conflicted before looking down at his current paper, leveling a sigh, and surrendering. "I wasn't tired anyway.”

He moved to grab an exceptionally well-worn cherry wood box from between the lone photograph and his beloved card tin.

"You _always_ want to play chess.” Atem protested, but he shut the door and sat down in his seat on his side of the desk.

“We could play duel monsters, but you never remember your deck.” Kaiba rolled his eyes. "Besides, I have a score to settle. What are we at now?”

“Six matches to four. Don’t pretend that you forgot so you can ignore the fact I’m always up on you.”

“You won’t be for long.” His defiant smile crept out even as he fought it off, brimming with the fire of challenge while he arranged the miniature armies on the board.

“You’ve been saying that for weeks, Kaiba.” Atem taunted. The mood was already beginning to lighten between them. 

“We’ll see. It’s my turn to play white tonight.”

Atem groaned. Playing black was awful. He despised being trapped on defense, especially against Kaiba who enjoyed an aggressive, rapid-development game over a materialistic one. “I get to pick the game next time.”

“Fine.”

And so it began.

White pawn e4. Black pawn e5.

A handshake. The opening moves were an easy ice breaker, hardly deeper than memorized stock answers laying a foundation for something more profound. 

White knight f3. Black pawn d6.

“The Philidor defense?” Kaiba scoffed. Pawn to d4.

“Maybe a truly open game is the conversation we need…” Atem offered. Bishop to g4. 

_I’m open, Kaiba! Hit me!_ The old fashioned tactic screamed. No one would make that move today. It was a statement piece. 

“You’re such a philosophy major...” Kaiba drawled with sarcasm. He bites. Pawn d4 captures pawn e5. “You’d be more useful with a degree in underwater basket weaving.”

“Well isn’t that the theoretician calling the kettle black.” Atem showed his teeth, bishop captured f3 knight. Another unspoken nod. Kaiba was partial to his draconian knights but the bishop was always Atem’s beloved and reliable servant on the board. He meant business. 

“Seriously, what will you do with that?” Kaiba scoffed as if to say _touché_. Queen captured bishop on f3. Board open, magician slain. This was business of the deathly serious variety. 

“Be a philosopher, obviously.” Atem gave a cheeky answer. Sass was his defense when he was down, and he was already down material... He played pawn d6 and captured pawn d5.

“How was that ever even a job?” He balked. Kaiba never took a vacation from being Kaiba, not for a single solitary moment. His oppressive development of the middle of the board continued. Bishop to c4, threatening checkmate on f7 already. “What, did Socrates sit around drinking wine on a balcony somewhere drunkenly slurring shit like ‘I think therefore I am’?”

“That was Descartes.” Wisdom knows when to play defense. Knight to f6.

“I know that!” Kaiba sounded offended. “That was the joke, dumbass!” 

Fine, he’d let Kaiba be funny. It was honestly a little funny. He laughed.

“Yes that’s exactly what he did.” Atem flashed a suggestive grin. “But you’re missing the part with the crowd under the balcony shouting ‘fuck yes, Daddy Socrates out with another banger, this man just will not miss!’”

“So that’s what you want to be, a bum?” The rebuttal came: white queen to b3, tag-team behind his bishop. Double or nothing on f7.

“No, I want to be a professor.” Atem said cooly, despite the predicament Kaiba just caused with his forcing move. He was coerced into playing queen to e7 in defense. “Looking at you though I’m not sure there’s much difference.”

Atem learned long ago in their early matches of Kaiba’s tick. He left his free hand next to the board, absently toying with the material he’d won in the graveyard. A few of the pawns even had thumb-shaped divots in their heads from years of abuse.

“There’s a huge difference. Mathematicians contemplate the deeper meanings of the universe. That’s a far cry from a wasted life.”

The tired, rehearsed dance of the opening game was over. Kaiba was planning something, and the course of play was shifting. 

“And philosophers don’t do that?” Atem watched Kaiba, anticipating his next move. Prediction: the butcher shop, the easy kill. Queen capture on b7, that’s the strongest position. Seize the material.

But he didn’t. He played knight to c3. 

A beautiful subversion for a more elegant course of play. Atem’s heart leap. He replied with c6 pawn, licking his lips at the thrill of anticipation.

“Philosophers speak English. Mathematicians speak the language of the gods.” Kaiba advanced his other bishop to g5, summoning the last of his material to the heart of the board in a high-attack beatdown.

“Do you believe in god?” Atem asked. He played b5 pawn, capturing the bishop that had been attacking f7 for the check. He finished his move, laying his right hand to rest beside the board in mimic to Kaiba’s, a calculated distance away.

“They say the topics of politics and religion are best left alone.” Kaiba didn’t look up from the game to entertain the question.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Atem watched his manicured fingers dither with indecision over the board. “That only applies for shallow people too weak to question or defend their own beliefs.”

He set his hand down closer this time, but not close enough to touch. Kaiba stilled his own, releasing the pawn he’d been fiddling with.

His expression turned to stony resentment, hiding whatever was behind that locked basement door he was determined to leave closed to Atem. For now.

“Can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of the whole celestial dictatorship idea.” His movement looked resolved when he played knight to capture on b5. No remorse. No retreats. No prisoners. “If I met god, I’d kill him. My life is my own.” He spat.

“Your life is your own?” Atem chuckled to himself. He stole material where he could find it, pawn c6 captured knight on b5. “Free will is a whole separate matter entirely.”

“You still owe me your answer.” Kaiba said.

“Do you want my official philosopher’s answer or my off the record answer?”

Atem returned his right hand beside the board, this time closing the final millimeters of distance to rest skin to skin against Kaiba’s, almost imperceptibly, at an electric singularity. He watched for a reaction. His opponent shifted his weight uneasily in his chair, keeping his gaze pinned on the pieces, but didn’t withdraw either.

“I didn’t ask for an academic dissertation.” A quick riposte, c4 bishop captures knight on b5. “Check.”

Kaiba’s fingers shifted slightly, brushing against Atem’s knuckles with a touch lighter than air and debatably deliberate. His face betrayed him, passivity ebbing out of his expression to give way to something akin to fear.

“Alright.” Atem hummed in thought, relishing the touch. “To me, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is to be a good man.”

Kaiba was playing this game with a bleeding, open heart and every shred of material on the board. He wouldn’t let Atem run. Every move was forcing, coaxing out definitive decisions. He was certainly going to go for another check with a queen side castle. He played his other, unused knight to d7.

“That’s a cop out stance!” As expected. Queen side castle. 

“No, it isn’t.” Atem defended his position and his king’s. Rook to d8. “If there are gods and they are just, they won’t care how devout I’ve been in life. They will welcome me on the merit of the virtues I lived by. If there are gods and they are unjust, they are unworthy of my service.” 

Atem gave a sigh and looked distant and suddenly as old as the ancients. 

“If there are no gods, then I will be dead. But I will have lived nobly and that memory will live on in the hearts of my friends.” He tapped his finger on the table achingly slow, as if mulling over his choice, and the movement drew slight caresses over Kaiba’s skin.

“Then what makes a good man?” His voice was throaty and low, laced with conspicuous nervousness. Kaiba’s rook captured Atem’s d7 knight. The middle game was falling away, the end game panning into frame.

“Now _that_ is a far better question worthy of more reflection than we have time for tonight.” Atem smiled, content in his element. Rook captures rook on d7. Tit for tat. “For one, though, I believe friendship is a large part of it.”

“You’re always talking about friends.” White rook to d1, a double-down assault on Atem’s rook position.

Kaiba crossed the smallest of his long, pale fingers over Atem’s index to still the tapping, leaving the two digits awkwardly intertwined. Atem politely ignored the blush pooling on his high cheekbones.

“I have a lot of them.” He looked pointedly at his rival, who had cleverly pinned him in another forced move. He played queen to d6, threatening a trade: Kaiba’s most precious material for his own. 

“Doesn’t that make your perspective biased then?” No one would ever accuse Kaiba of pulling punches. Bishop to capture rook on d7, despite Atem’s clearly marked trap on the square. He could faintly feel his pulse racing through their shared contact. “Check.”

“Perhaps.” Black’s move. His knight, no longer pinned to protect his queen, recaptured the enemy bishop on d7. Crisis averted, but only for a moment. Atem was mindful to keep his right hand perfectly still for fear of scaring the other off. 

“You study ethics?” Kaiba made the unanticipated move of withdrawing their contact, his left hand, his _off_ hand, to play queen to b8 in what was both profoundly elegant strategy and the loudest statement he’d ever made. His fingers were shaking so fiercely he almost knocked over the pieces. His face was flush down to his chest and his long bangs hid his eyes from view.

“Check.” He whispered. He laid his hand back down beside the board, palm up. An invitation. A queen sacrifice. 

“How’d you guess?” Atem said softly. He played knight capture on b8. Sacrifice accepted. 

He took the precious white queen in his left hand and placed his right in his opponent’s on the desk. Kaiba shuttered at the electric contact, but didn’t pull away. A long beat passed and his fingers tightened with a possessive grip. Atem grazed his nails over Kaiba’s pulse, watching him shiver. His heart fluttered in his throat until he was so short of breath he felt faint. 

“Well you certainly don’t study logic.” Kaiba sealed his victory with rook to d8. 

“Checkmate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: All the ‘games’ between Kaiba and Atem in this chapter--yes, even chess--are classic game theory [zero-sum scenarios](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game#:~:text=In%20game%20theory%20and%20economic,utility%20of%20the%20other%20participants.). (You know, the kind Gozuboro canonically trained Kaiba to win at because of their application to economics and warfare, not love?) As such, each has a predefined [Nash Equilibrium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium) associated with the different combinations of possible strategies employed. It can be thought of as an impasse point of sorts where neither player can do better by unilaterally changing their strategy. 
> 
> Kaiba Wins People Through Chess Victories Round 2: Electric Boogaloo
> 
> The match played in the office is [Paul Morphy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy)’s iconic [Opera Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-2FpiEzeYI&vl=en-US). I picked this match because I think Morphy’s grand romantic, highly offensive play style aligns perfectly with the way Kaiba duels. He’s also famous for being a chess prodigy who retired at only 22 because he won every match too easily and had no rivals he considered worthy of playing. If only he could have met Bobby Fischer! 
> 
> This game is famous for the way he makes tons of sacrifices and forcing moves to secure the victory. In the end, he only has two pieces of material left! But that’s all he needs for that very sexy [mating](https://images.chesscomfiles.com/proxy/www.chessvideos.tv/bimg/3gl187e5dmckc/http/ac644d1b27.png)... ;) In all seriousness I think that’s symbolic of how much the highly incredulous Kaiba would feel he’s risking/sacrificing to open himself up to someone else, even just a tiny bit. He gets to win this game, he deserves a W for being a brave hand-holdy boi in this chapter. (In chess, white has the natural advantage by always going first. Headcanon: Kaiba NEVER beats Atem when he has to play black!)


	7. The Frat House of Wisdom: Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't like the ~vibe~ of this chapter as just one long block, so I'm splitting it in two (very uneven) parts.

There was no escape anymore. It was incredibly unfair. 

Atem had weaseled a way to taint even his most personal and secret reprieve--duel monsters--with thoughts of his presence and his mind wore their intrusiveness into something grander, like a grain of sand into a pearl. 

Kaiba poked some holofoil cards around the table, absently watching the light catch in little rainbows on the surface. Thursday had been... nice. And so had Friday morning, even though he hadn’t slept at all the night before. 

He had worried himself to the point of tears and nausea that the whole affair had been a one-off. That once midnight gave way to morning it would all be forgotten. He hadn’t expected Atem to come for office hours, considering he’d left after their chess match only hours earlier, but in a show of good faith he didn’t break with tradition. 

Kaiba made two cups of coffee. They talked more than they argued. It was nice. 

He thought he might like to try that again.   
He thought he might like to try that again tonight.

Actually, since the retaining wall had been marred with fissures of what _could_ be, the flood of everything more he wanted to try came spilling out all over again. The notion that Atem didn’t strike him as shy about indulging in the particular sort of more he had in mind wasn’t lost on him either, and his stomach turned in a pleasant nervousness at the thought.

Kaiba slipped the edge of his black turtleneck over his nose, accidentally smudging his reading glasses along the way and hiding his blush from nobody since he was in the loneliness of his own living room. He tried to return to flipping through deck compositions on the table, but the action was hollow and stale. The music streaming over from the party across the street rang through the quiet like a personal shot against his solitude. 

It was Saturday night now and Kaiba was alone as usual. The unusual part was this time he couldn’t stop thinking of the preferred alternative, which for once did not involve Mokuba. He was stung with the sour realization that he’d not once met Atem outside his office or the classroom. The routine felt insurmountably awkward to break, like asking someone’s name after you’d already known them for a while. 

_If you want it, you have to ask._

Ask. He’d have to ask Atem out.  
Kaiba wasn’t sure what the structure of that sentence might look like. 

That was a life lesson normal people learned at sixteen. His mood only darkened further with painful self-disgust at the memory of what kept him preoccupied at sixteen. He pulled his arms in reflexive protection around his torso and fought the urge to flop over on the sofa in defeat. 

Ten years too late for that lesson, and he was paying the steep price now in humiliation at his own naivety. Atem would laugh if he knew. Once he knew. The secret couldn’t be locked away forever, and when he was found out it would all be over. 

Maybe it was better never to start. 

The white-hot knife burned to the core, cutting open poorly healed wounds that were self-sutured with shaking hands long ago. The uniquely old misery called for a powerful antidote saved only to combat the worst memories. 

On the bottom of the card tin was an old deck held together by worn out rubber bands. The top ‘card’ wasn’t a card but rather a drawing of a Blue-Eyes Mokuba had snuck him long ago. The rest were his original deck, from a bygone era when duel monsters only had one release, complete with three very worn out first-edition Blue-Eyes White Dragons. Every card had snagged corners and a few bore small creases, not from carelessness but an overabundance of love. He never lost a single duel with this deck, and the memory of those victories was enough to chase off even the worst phantoms of Gozuboro.

Tonight’s pain lightened but lingered. The deck was old, not competitive anymore. Perhaps it was the lens of nostalgia, but the game never captured the same thrill with later generations. The original held an irreplaceable spot in his heart. 

The music leaking in from outside spontaneously cranked to another decibel level and Kaiba’s already difficult mood was broaching a new tipping point. He shoved the deck in the front pocket of his jeans out of unbreakable habit and stormed over to check the soundproofing he’d installed around the window jam. Intact, but not enough. 

He kicked the wall moulding in abject frustration, leaving a dent in the drywall with his own stupidity and the smoldering caldera of his temper finally erupted. 

“AAARRGGHHH!”

Kaiba couldn’t even ruminate in his own apartment in peace. Wasn’t there a noise ordinance in this town? There might as well not be. He’d placed several calls to Domino City PD with Saturday night noise complaints, but none were ever met with action. They had probably been paid off.

Enough was enough. It was time to take matters into his own hands. Kaiba resolved to storm over there and trip the power breakers. It was innocent enough; nothing would be damaged and the ignorant wingnuts would probably be too drunk to figure out what happened until they sobered up in the morning. Problem solved. 

The night air was crisp but not freezing, the first sign that spring was looming on the horizon. Kaiba didn’t bother with a jacket. This little trip would be over soon enough. 

The bass from the electronic music rattled the windows of every car crammed precariously close together lined all the way down the block on both sides of the street. Some rich asshole left his Mercedes G-Wagon parked out of harm's way in the middle of the fraternity lawn, but the remainder of the grass was occupied by the steady river of bodies flowing in and out of Delta House. 

In the center of the ostentatious façade, someone had painted the fraternity motto in neat, stenciled script under the enormous brass letters ΔΤΧ. 

_Robur per Amicitiam_

Strength through Friendship

Or, if one considered that _robur_ was also a term for the inescapable part of a jail, ‘Imprisonment through Friendship’ was an equally valid interpretation. Kaiba was partial to the latter. 

The door was propped wide open and no one seemed to be minding who was coming or going. This was proving easier than originally anticipated. 

Despite hardly being older than the undergrads, Kaiba looked painfully out of place. All the guests were dressed in haphazardly constructed DIY costumes with tunics, sandals, gold jewelry and eyeliner. One plastered couple unabashedly swallowing each other whole on the porch were fittingly dressed as Antony and Cleopatra. 

Kaiba swallowed the urge to wretch and stepped inside, but the smell wasn’t helping. It was too dark to see much of the laser-lit interior, but he hadn’t come to gawk anyhow. He was herded deeper inside with the stampede of cattle and the incessant thrumming of the deep house music gave way to a new song change and a tacky 80’s drumbeat took over. The whole room started screaming with excitement before the swarm of drunks started singing along.

“ _All the old paintings on the tomb they do the sand dance don’t you know!_ ”

Find the breaker box. Kaiba slipped off out of the main room and into another, dodging some beer-chugging red-cup-throwing party game dominating a large part of the filth pit that might have been called a kitchen. 

“ _If they move too quick, OH WHEY OH, they’re burning down like our Domino!_ ”

The crowd had evidently changed the words to be a pun on the university name because the line didn’t match the ‘falling down like a domino’ on the track. 

Kaiba pushed through the maze of halls and rooms with a thin layer of frat sludge forming on the hardwood floors. He gave a groan at the thought of his shoes. Crammed on the stairwell landing, some shit-faced hooligan casually grabbed his arm.

“Hey man! Wrong party theme, ‘The Dot Com Bubble’ isn’t until next week, but I like your costume!” Kaiba could feel his spit on his face when he screamed in his ear over the music. “Let me guess: you’re an eccentric, egomaniacal, billionaire tech CEO?”

“What?” He spat back, trying to snatch his arm free.

“The black turtleneck, the glasses, the smug aura… You’re Steve Jobs, right?” Kaiba broke away and shot a murderous glare before storming off again. He wound up right back where he started in the main floor living room, which had been transformed into a dancefloor complete with a soundboard and wannabe DJ. He still hadn’t found the breaker box.

“ _WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN!!_ ”

The crowd erupted again to sing the chorus before moving their arms in some idiotic ‘Z’ shape dance. 

Think. A huge building on university property that had clearly been rewired since its construction eons ago. Fire code probably demanded the circuit breaker be outside for emergencies. 

Kaiba shuffled out onto the back porch where guests were being served disgusting cheap liquor drinks off an obviously illegal free bar. Down the stairs, around a pit of smashed beer bottles, on a brick wall above the foundation. Bingo.

Alas, Kaiba had been outfoxed. Apparently one resident of the house wasn’t as dumb as he’d pegged them all to be because the breaker box was chained shut to deter exactly this issue. He huffed in frustration, ripping at his own hair. He refused to leave empty handed. 

Kaiba picked up a split lump of concrete and took to bashing in a rusted looking link of the chain. The clash of stone on metal echoed out over the lake the house backed up to. 

“Aight pretty boy Floyd, I don’t know who ya think ya are but my Brooklyn rage is about to kick your ass into next week!” Kaiba caught sight of a mop of blonde hair before he was gruffly ripped off the wall, but he shook him off and whipped around. 

“Do you think he’s one of Malik’s goons from Phi Society?” A broad-shouldered brunet was walking over with a flashlight along with some guy who thought dice earrings were fashionable. 

“Nah, he’s not wearing enough of daddy’s money to be one of those douchebags.” The back-haired one had on the most believable Egyptian get-up. “Besides, his sister Isis is hanging out here with Mai tonight and she always tells us when he’s got something stupid planned.”

“Spare me the bull, I’ve had enough of you morons already!” Kaiba was behaving more than a bit brash for what could easily devolve into a three-on-one fight. “Take me to whoever is in charge!”

They laughed in his face. 

“Nice try, but one does not simply request an audience with the pharaoh.” The himbo shined the flashlight on him up and down and the blonde one, who definitely looked the stupidest of the idiot trio, shoved him up against the wall.

“Ey, don’t I remember yous from somewhere?” Damn, he was actually pretty tough...

“Yeah, I was the obedience trainer at your doggie daycare, mutt, guess the lessons didn’t stick.” Kaiba fought the urge to spit in his face that was only inches away. 

“Dude, what’s your _problem_?” The long haired one rushed over to intercept what he knew was an impending brawl. 

“Yah, we’ll see how you’re talkin’ after this big dog mucks up that pretty mug ‘a yours!” 

The blonde, undoubtedly stronger than he was, drew back for a swing but Kaiba was quicker and tackled them both kicking into the dirt with his weight around his waist. They grappled in a scrap heap on the ground and Kaiba got the wind cleaned out of him with a good knee to the gut, but he had the advantage starting on top. He managed a solid elbow shot right under one big brown eye before the other two pried them apart. 

“This ain’t over, I ain’t finished with him!” 

“Cut it out, Jou! Go find Shizuka and have her put some ice on that before it swells up. We’ll take care of this.”

“Nah, I can’t have her seein’ me like this…” He grumbled.

“Then go find Yugi!” Two strong grips tightened around both Kaiba’s arms and hauled him to his feet. Yugi?! That couldn’t mean…

“Ask and you shall receive, dumbass, we’ll let the pharaoh deal with you.”

Kaiba had the wisdom to keep his mouth shut while they dragged him back into the house and down a narrow flight of stairs to the lower level. No one was down here and the area seemed sectioned off from the rest of the building, possibly an in-law suite back when this house actually housed functional people instead of degenerates.

They unlatched a pair of dense, intricately carved oaken doors and Kaiba had the presence of mind to wonder if whoever’s money bought them originally was rolling over in their grave at what had become of them now. They entered a small anteroom with doors onto a walk-in closet and a bath with a third door still shut tight. Kaiba thought to make a break for it, but at this point he had one guess who ‘The Pharaoh’ might be...

His stomach churned.

“Hey! It’s just us! Open up!” 

A series of multiple deadbolts clicked out of place and the door swung open into what could only be described as a den of debauchery. The scene was the polar opposite of the happenings upstairs and the pounding club music was replaced with an ambient soundtrack of Avant-Garde jazz. 

The sheer extravagant lengths carried out to transform a bedroom in a fraternity house into a posh recreation of dark victorian academia would have been comical if it weren’t so flawlessly executed. 

The enormous room was shrouded in low, warm light with a haze of smoke that held the aroma of incense, tobacco, and something definitely illegal. The walls were furnished with deep mahogany paneling and the built-in bookshelves were crammed with strange Egyptian artifacts, leather-bound books, photographs of friends, and a board game collection to rival his own. In the far half of the room, A luxurious king-sized bed flanked with kaleidoscopic tiffany lamps sat beside a very out of place secondary twin bed, clearly placed there as an afterthought. 

Excessive and eccentric couldn’t begin to cover the ‘entertaining’ half of the room. 

A golden bar cart brimming with crystal decanters and bottles of absinthe, gin, scotch, and vermouth was looking well picked over from beside a roaring fireplace, topped with a genuine oil portrait of Dionysus over the hearth. The sitting area was framed with a deep-pile hand-woven Persian rug. On top, there ran a broad Moroccan coffee table littered with cocktail glasses, an ongoing card game, and all manner of assorted paraphernalia. The table was flanked by twin leather Chesterfield sofas, stuffed to bursting with people of all sexes, with several more bodies spilling over onto cushions on the floor. 

At the head of the table sat Atem, perched on his classically academic wingback throne. 

He was dressed in a very convincing pharaoh costume with a cat purring under one hand and a glass of red wine in the other, chatting jovially in what sounded like Arabic with a long, dread-haired man to his left. 

“Who the fuck are you?”

Kaiba was first addressed not by Atem, but by the man on his right. His sleek, sable hair was pushed behind one ear to reveal several golden earrings before draping over his shoulder. He took a long drag on his cigarette and ashed into a crystal tray on the table while glaring at Kaiba with uncanny piercing blue fury. The asshole from the coffee shop.

“Try having some couth, Seth, that’s not how you greet people.” The umber-skinned man who had been talking with Atem sounded exasperated.

“Relax,” Atem’s crimson eyes were ethereal in the firelight when he beamed at Kaiba. “He’s a friend.”

“You have too many friends.” The blue-eyed monster leaned back into the sofa and crossed his arms.

“There’s no such thing.” Atem said.

“Yeah, ummm, pharaoh, not sure where you met this fuckboy but we caught him trying to smash the lock off the breaker box outside.” Dice boy said.

“He punched Jou in the face!” The other one added.

Atem’s chest was heaving with repressed laughter and the mirth in his expression threatened to bubble over at any moment.

“Let’s call the cops and report him for property damage and assault, I’d love to watch this dweeb spend a night in the drunk tank.” Seth let a cloud of smoke filter out his nose like some sadistic dragon.

“What are you doing in this opium den, Atem?” Kaiba tore his arms away from the grips of the guys who hauled him in so he could cross them when he stared down his spiky-haired student.

“Holding court.” The pharaoh’s eyes held a mischievous twinkle as he gestured to the scene around him. “Welcome to my palace.”

“Turn down that miserable racket upstairs. Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“I’m not sure you’re in a position to be making demands, Kaiba.” 

Apparently his reputation preceded him even here because Seth and the Arabic-tongued one both adopted looks of shock and horror when hearing his name and were now engaged in a heated debate consisting solely of eye contact and facial expressions, gesturing frantically back to the pharaoh.

Atem’s voice was callous and he rolled the stem of the glass in his fingers thoughtfully. “I have a set of ground rules, which include not physically assaulting any of my brothers and abiding by a certain social decorum. You will find these rules are quite strict. Do not attempt to bend them, or you will be broken.”

Kaiba’s temper was breaking the thermometer. He wasn’t about to stand here and have his own words thrown back in his face.

“I’m leaving.”

“Not so fast…” There was no real chance of escape anyway, the two brutes from earlier were still blocking the door. “I believe you still owe me a rematch at a game of my choosing.”

“Now is hardly the time.”

“On the contrary, now is the perfect time. Unless you are backing out of a challenge and a bet.” Atem knew exactly how to back Kaiba into a corner.

“What are the stakes?”

A terrifying skinny bald dude with tattoos extending onto his forehead and hoop earrings was whispering in hushed tones to some dark, hulking man who looked as though he were hewn from a block of onyx. He was nearly twice the bald one’s size with square bangs and a grown-out bowl cut. Kaiba only caught a few lines from them.

“Karim, hurry up and text Yugi, I think Atem is trying one of his ‘shadow game’ things again.”  
“Good idea, Yugi’s like 85% of his impulse control… ugh, he says he already left the party…”   
“Shit.”

“If you win, I shut the music off. Party’s over. Everyone goes home.” Atem’s attendants looked distressed at the prospect.

“And?” Kaiba quirked an eyebrow.

“If I win, the show goes on,” He flashed a wily smile. “And you lend me the pleasure of your company for the remainder of the evening.”

“You’re on.” Kaiba failed to swallow his own smile, and Atem beamed back before his expression harded again. 

“Everyone out.” When no one started shuffling for the door he stood up and added “Now!”

“ _Excuse me_?” Seth hissed. 

“Everyone includes you.” Something else unspoken passed between them when Seth wrenched him down with a white knuckled grip on his wrist. Atem made an untranslatable face and he finally let go, redirecting his displeasure at Kaiba. He refused to squirm under his lethal glare. 

“You’re racking up a debt, pharaoh.” He made a show of dragging himself up and kicking at his neighbor’s heels. “You heard him. Mahad’s room is upstairs.”

“So is yours…” Atem’s other close friend grumbled in aggravation. He chased the courtiers out the door, slamming it in their wake and re-fastening the deadbolts with an inescapable finality. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: ENORMOUS thank you to all of you who have stuck with this story so far and left such incredibly kind comments!! I am floored at the amount of attention this self-indulgent fic has received and I swoon at every word you have left!! Y'all are so wonderful!!
> 
> If you’ve never heard America’s #1 Billboard hit of 1987, [Walk Like an Egyptian](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuzHUuuk), boy do I have a treat for your gay little Yu-Gi-Oh heart.
> 
> Math will return en force for Ch. 9, but in the meantime this chapter title is a pun on the Baghdad House of Wisdom, a beacon of Islamic Golden Age intellectualism beside the tire fire of shitty European dark ages, that made amazing contributions to philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and practically invented chemistry to name a few. Notably, this is where Muhammad al-Khwarizmi wrote _Kitab al-Jabr_ which is where we get the term ‘algebra’ from!


	8. The Frat House of Wisdom: Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: alcohol, cw: impaired ability to consent, no actual dubcon

Atem scrambled his familiar flock of friends and clicked the locks shut under the promise of peaceful solitude. 

“They’re gone now. Have a seat.” 

His demeanor shifted perceptibly, but he wasn’t smiling when he gestured to one sofa, dissecting his intruder’s every move. Kaiba was obliged to accept his hospitality, keeping his arms crossed in a show of distrust when he settled stiffly on the leather. Neither spoke a word. 

The air was thick, and not from the lingering fog of smoke. Atem neglected to make eye contact when he walked over to the makeshift bar, grabbing two crystalline rocks glasses and splashing generous portions of one of his nicer bottles of scotch he’d been saving for a special occasion into both, lukewarm, no ‘rocks’. The amber liquid sloshed a miniature tidal wave with the heavy handed way Atem slammed it on the table for his unexpected guest. He took a seat on the matching sofa, directly across the table. 

Atem devoured half the buttery burning liquid, savoring the heat over his tongue before at last looking up to meet Kaiba with neutral words.

“What are you doing here?” He watched Kaiba’s jaw clench as though he’d been caught off guard.

“I’d say that’s all water under the bridge now.” His face was equally passive.

“Why did you punch Jou?” Atem asked, careful to make the question sound prompting more than accusatory. 

“I didn’t punch him--”

“Don’t get technical with me!” He was not in a patient mood.

“He was being an ass.” Kaiba swallowed a sip from his own glass without so much as a wince. 

“Naturally,” Atem said. Kaiba stirred under the unbroken eye contact. “I would hardly call that an offence worthy of corporal punishment.” 

Kaiba’s crossed arms shifted almost imperceptibly with his hands moving to rest around his ribs instead of his biceps.

“What do you care?” He bit out, but Atem didn’t miss his recoiling the way he did during their last fight in his office. This was about more than Jou. “What’s between us is none of your business.”

“Of course I care!” Atem was firm. There was no ground to surrender on this issue. “And it happened here so it is my business. I manage the legal liability for anything that goes on under this roof in addition to answering to nationals and the university for everything that happens to anyone who walks through those doors. That is an exceptional responsibility on the best of days, not to mention the burden on my own conscience, and I take that very seriously!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, your little fraternity… How important, your majesty--”

“You think places like this aren’t already under a microscope because of bullshit like that? Or worse?” Atem was unyielding. “I don’t tolerate that behavior, not here, not anywhere. It reflects a lack of respect and self-control and if you were a brother here I’d have you on suspension.” 

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression boys will be--”

“You and I aren’t boys, Kaiba.” Atem was ice cold. “We’re men.” 

“Then you’re wise enough to know that in the real world sometimes people get hurt.” Kaiba’s blue eyes were equally frosted but distant, and Atem caught him grinding his teeth once again.

“The consequences here are just as real as anywhere else.” Atem was stern and stared him down until he was squirming in his seat with the itch to turn away. “There is never an excuse to beat someone. Have I made myself clear?”

Kaiba suddenly looked smaller than his usual domineering self and he gave a serious nod before throwing back the last of his drink.

“Good.” Atem snagged the glass before it could reach the table and stood up, face lightening into a gentle smile. “Then it is, as you said, all water under the bridge now.”

He walked over to the bar to start another round.

“Gin.” Kaiba said.

“No ‘please’?” Atem picked up one of the decanters instead. “You and Seth…” Another healthy pour to loosen the tension. “I can’t stand this stuff. Tastes like Christmas with a hint of domestic violence.” Atem chuckled at his own joke. Kaiba didn’t. 

Oh. Jou probably wouldn’t have laughed at that either, but then again he would have known better than to say that in front of him. A puzzle piece finally clicked into place. Atem felt a wave of shame wash over him and tried not to dwell on the implications.

Of all the thousand ways he’d dreamt of luring Kaiba here since the start of the semester, this was never how he imagined any of those encounters would start. He forced a smile on his face, praying the awkward moment would blow over with a well-played distraction and sat back down.

“Aren’t you going to ask what game I had in mind?” Kaiba accepted the drink and Atem took to tidying the coffee table, boxing up the cards and collecting the glasses on a tray. “Only you would accept a bet without knowing the details.”

“I know I can take you at anything,” Kaiba’s frozen disposition began to thaw with the fire of challenge. It was working. Atem let out a breath of relief. 

“I wouldn’t be so confident if I were you.” The table was empty, and Atem couldn’t resist his growing grin. He let his gaze speak for itself and his eyes drifted to Kaiba’s lap.

“Spit it out!” Kaiba’s face flushed after following his line of sight, clearly missing the hint.

“Duel Monsters.” Atem said.

“Why would I have my deck?” Kaiba had forgotten what was poking out of his front pocket, but Atem wouldn’t mistake the brown and black design anywhere. Recognition washed over his face and in an instant he dropped a rubber-band bound collective of worn out cards on the table. He gave an infuriated huff, clenching and unclenching his hands with frustration in his lap.

“This won’t be a very fair game,” He grumbled.

“Why not?”

“It’s not my real deck… Well, it used to be,” He huffed again, evidently embarrassed about something. “It’s my first one, just original release cards…”

Atem felt his heart skip a beat in a flurry of excitement. 

“Wait!” Kaiba jumped in surprise when Atem rested his hand over his in a staying gesture before bounding up out of his seat. 

He tore open the bedside table drawer which held only his most precious belongings, knowing exactly the home of what he was looking for. He slipped the cards out of a little leather deck box, tracing his finger over the tiny taped-over tear in the corner of his original Dark Magician from when he and Yugi had fought over it when they were kids. 

Atem set the cards down reverently on the coffee table, incandescent with delight. 

“I haven’t gotten to play with this deck in years…” His voice was soft and wistful, shuffling through his spells and traps as though he needed a reminder of what was there. He could never forget. “You know, I’ve never lost with these cards. I have a modern deck, too, but it’s not the same feeling.”

“Yeah. I know.” Whatever sullen atmosphere had settled between them earlier was ebbing away once again. He looked up at Kaiba to find his irritation replaced with Atem’s favorite emotion. Nostalgia. 

“Do we need paper? For life points?” 

“You think I can’t add and subtract a few numbers in my head?” Kaiba scoffed.

“Weren’t you the one who stressed the difference between math and arithmetic?” Atem teased. “Let’s keep it super old school, 2000 life points, no direct attacks.”

“Sure, why not.” Kaiba tossed his deck in an overhand shuffle, and Atem watched mesmerized by the motion of his thin fingers while riffling his own with a snap in a fitting faro shuffle. Sufficiently mixed, they squared their decks off to their own right on the table and Atem fished a coin out of a shot glass that was used to play quarters earlier in the evening. 

He flipped it. Heads. 

“My choice. I want to go second.” Atem said.

“What!” Kaiba protested. “You didn’t even let me call it!”

“I don’t need to! You _always_ pick tails!” He rolled his eyes. Kaiba grit his teeth but didn’t argue. “Let’s duel.”

They both snatched five cards into their hand and he sipped his drink while assessing the draw. Kaiba mirrored the gesture, a smug smile creeping onto his features and flashing with contemptible delight at Atem over the cards. Clearly he’d pulled Blue-Eyes. Kaiba kept a terrible poker face.

Somewhere along their marathon of games his body decided that conceited expression was delicious, but the real thing was somehow more tantalizing than the recreation that haunted his dreams. 

The hand, Atem. Right. He forced his traitorous wandering eyes back to his own cards.

Curse of Dragon, Multiply, Monster Replace, The Eye of Truth, and (thank the gods) Dark Magician. 

“My move.” Kaiba summoned his first monster, Ryu-Kishin Powered, to the table in attack mode. There was a slight catch that Atem immediately felt foolish for not considering earlier.

“Are… Are all your cards in Japanese?” 

“Obviously,” He drawled as if it were the most idiotic question in the world. Which, on second thought, it sort of was. “You don’t honestly think they print off English cards in Japan? Even if they did, why would I buy them?”

Of course he hadn’t grown up in the US... Kaiba held on to a subtle accent, easy to miss but still swallowing all the more demanding schwa sounds. Atem hadn’t given much thought to Kaiba’s life before he arrived in Domino, but after the revelations tonight his mind was conjuring all manner of questions. He was an enigma. 

“Do you need me to read them to you?” He sounded teasing and although the prospect of hearing Kaiba’s voice read off the cards was almost irresistibly enticing, Atem wanted to impress him even more.

“That’s not necessary, I have the first edition series memorized.” 

“Then quit wasting my time and make your move.” Kaiba nursed his drink in one hand, remaining cards in the other. His tongue was sharp, but his lips curled up at the edges at Atem’s admission. 

Atem summoned Curse of Dragon, clearing Ryu-Kishin from the field and costing Kaiba an early 400 LP. Always ideal to have the second move. He set a trap card and a spell card face down to end his turn.

“Hnn. Formidable.” Kaiba seemed patently unfazed and made his draw. “You should appreciate the early advantage. You’ll need it.”

“Whatever you say.” Atem chuckled, admiring the way his soft chestnut bangs shifted on his furrowed brow. 

Kaiba’s citadel of seclusion was not so impenetrable as he liked to believe and his emotions betrayed themselves in the form of miniscule microexpressions. His walls looked imposing from a distance but in reality were feeble with decay. Atem wanted to prod at the loose bricks to steal a glance inside. 

“So…” He pretended to be considering his cards but Atem could tell he was really weighing his words since his opening move was a deliberate sacrifice. Kaiba took another stiff swig of his drink. “Is this a theme party…? Or something?”

“That’s the best kind. Tonight is ‘King Tuts and Egyptian Sluts’ in honor of my recent travels.” Even Bast was sporting a faux golden collar for the occasion and the metal tinkled when the cat leapt up to his side. 

Kaiba gave a snort. “Nice dress.” He said sarcastically.

“You like it? It’s quite authentic. I had Otoogi help me make it.” Atem drew his legs apart in what would have been a rather revealing gesture in the short tunic if he hadn’t pulled the cat into his lap with a reluctant mewl. He watched Kaiba swallow dryly. 

“Whatever,” He took another drink. “I play Swordstalker. Attack points--”

“Yeah, I know, 2400 because I killed Ryu-Kishin…” Atem played at being bitter for the show of it, already prepared with his set card. 

“Then say good-bye to your Curse of Dragon.”

Atem had a shit eating grin when he flipped his back row trap.

“Oh come on!” Kaiba slammed the glass on the table in frustration. “That card’s not even tournament legal anymore!”

“Yeah, but it used to be!” Atem argued. “I play Monster Replace and call Curse of Dragon back to my hand and summon Dark Magician instead.” 

“You’re infuriating.” Kaiba downed the rest of his liquor furiously while Dark Magician attacked Swordstalker, costing him another 100 LP and Atem re-summoned Curse of Dragon back to the field. “The most remarkably disagreeable person I’ve ever met and I fail to see how anyone can stand you.”

“You’ll have to learn,” He goaded, polishing his own off and grabbing both glasses for a third time. “At this rate you'll be stuck here all night. I told you I didn’t intend to lose.”

Kaiba drew his next card. Atem poured again.

“Why do you even throw these ridiculous events? They’re disgusting.” He drummed his fingers impatiently, waiting for his opponent to return to play his next card.

“I like large parties, they’re so intimate. At small parties, there isn’t any privacy.” He hinted at their current arrangement and set both glasses on the left, opposite their decks, in case of any unfortunate spillage. 

“Try writing your own pick-up lines, Fitzgerald.” Kaiba spat back. 

“So _that’s_ what that was? A pick-up line? That’s news to me…” Atem nearly bowled over in a fit of laughter, scaring Bast off the sofa. His voice lowered to a more provocative octave. “Although it could be one, if you wanted it to be.”

Kaiba’s pale skin never afforded him any favors and the red bled from his cheeks to all over his face. He pretended Atem hadn’t said anything. He set a trap card and summoned La Jinn, the Mystical Genie.

“You don’t like a good party?” Atem said. He knew Kaiba was planning to use his trap given that La Jinn’s attack points were lower than Dark Magician’s but his hand left him no choice but to attack or pass the turn. 

“No, I don’t.” Kaiba bit out. He stiffened with the same distant melancholy he wore earlier. “I prefer bad parties. I mean it. No stupid ice sculptures and tailored suits at vapid galas. I’d prefer a party with brawls and seductions, the kind where people go home with hurt feelings and girls pass out in the bathroom. That’s what I like to see. At least that’s an honest affair. Really I prefer no parties at all.” 

Atem didn’t reply. He was at a loss again. Kaiba was here. Wish granted. 

But Kaiba seemed heavy-hearted and none of his flirtations ever fell well on his gravely attitude. In fact, they only served to sour the mood... Atem drew one foot up on the sofa’s edge, wrapping his arms around his leg and placing his chin on his knee. 

“My Dark Magician attacks La Jinn.” He knew it was a losing move, but what else to play?

Kaiba activated his continuous trap, Ancient Lamp.

“I expected something more clever from you. How disappointing.” Kaiba re-directed the attack to Curse of Dragon, sending it to the graveyard at the price of 500 of Atem’s LP. They were tied now. “And while we’re at it, I play De-Spell. I know that other face down card isn’t a trap so get rid of it.”

Atem turned over Swords of Revealing light and tossed it out with an aggravated growl. 

The evening was coming up short of ideal. Kaiba was donning a somewhat deflated attitude after several of Atem’s unfortunate comments and now his own mood was taking a turn for the worse. He couldn’t even win at his favorite game. Atem didn’t want to say much of anything anymore. He was glad the room had emptied out, but more than anything he wanted to be alone. 

Awkward. Introverted. Weird.   
Friday had been… nice. Now they were regressing. He was ruining everything. Atem hated himself. 

He’d much prefer to be someone else, especially right now. A chameleon, becoming what his friends asked him to be. But Kaiba closed up to all his brazen posturing and Atem had no idea who Kaiba wanted him to be instead. 

Being himself was out of the question. He was awkward. So awkward. Even Yugi was embarrassed by him. Kaiba would laugh if he knew. Once he knew. The secret couldn’t be locked away forever, and when he was found out it would all be over.

Maybe it was better never to start. 

All the true pieces of himself he’d grown to despise and become well practiced at hiding, Kaiba always dredged back up to the surface. He was far too sharp to fall for the over-confident performance piece and Atem was naked without the familiar camouflage.

“Pick a move already, it’s a card not a mortgage.” Kaiba rearranged his posture to mirror his own, perhaps subconsciously, and Atem felt his skin crawl under the heat of his hungry gaze.

“I play the spell card Eye of Truth,” Atem forced himself to talk. “Show me your hand.”

“Won’t help you.” Kaiba casually flipped his cards over, he only had two left. He was right. All he had was Saggi the Dark Clown and one Blue-Eyes, which he’d already suspected. Why hadn’t he played it yet? 

Atem looked back at his own hand at the card he’d just drawn. Exactly what he needed: Mystic Box. That was workable! He smirked at his opponent, who perked up in anticipation.

“Alright, Kaiba, I play Mystic Box and target your Ancient Lamp trap for destruction. Dark Magician is free to kill La Jinn.” Atem let a little of his genuine confidence return when Kaiba groaned, knowing his LP just dropped to a meager 800.

“Ugh, why do you have so many cheap traps and spells? Is that your whole damn deck?” Kaiba stood up this time to help himself to another drink, irritated with Atem’s latest move. 

“I know you were ten when you made this deck, Kaiba, but there’s more to good strategy than cool monsters.” He teased.

“Don’t lecture me on tactics, this deck is flawless.” Kaiba slammed another glass down for Atem too and took a stiff sip along with his next draw. It was a good thing they could both play this game backwards and in their sleep. 

“Show me the proof, so far I think that argument is non sequitur. _Pfft,_ ‘flawless deck’… ” Atem chuckled. “You’re such a perfectionist.” Kaiba took that far more seriously than he’d meant it. 

“Of course I am, don’t make that sound like an insult. I’ve never settled for mediocrity as a standard and neither should you.” He played Saggi the Dark Clown and laid a trap card he’d drawn after Atem glimpsed his hand. 

Still no dragon… The picture was beginning to coalesce. Atem recalled the three worn-out Blue-Eyes cards from the tin in Kaiba’s office. He was planning to summon Blue-Eyes Ultimate, but there wasn’t much he could do to stop him right now. He summoned Gaia the Fierce Knight to pad his field. He dithered over whether to attack with the trap in place.

“I’m the best. Undisputed. When I put my work out there, everyone knows it's mine. I intimidate them. I live for being hated by them. I’ve obliterated my rivals. There’s no one left who can compete with me.” He glared over the table, waiting for the next move.

“Perfectionism is playing a defensive game, Kaiba. It’s the belief that if we do things perfectly, if we can look perfect, we can avoid the pain of blame, judgment, or shame.” Atem said.

“Don’t psychobabble at me!” Their discussion had struck a raw nerve. Atem was learning Kaiba’s tendency to substitute anger for other emotions he felt less comfortable confronting. 

“It’s not psychology, it’s philosophy. I want to know _your_ philosophy, Kaiba. What do you value? Why? Have you stopped moving forward lately to reassess that? Have you _ever_ stopped to assess that?” Atem held off his move a while longer, hoping to keep Kaiba talking.

“I know that I want to be the best. Why would that ever change?” 

“To be _the_ best or to be _your_ best?” Atem was searching his face for the answer that wouldn’t match his words.

“I don’t see why there’s a difference.” Kaiba spat. He was growing increasingly frustrated with this particular line of inquiry. He kept his arms crossed and bounced one foot on the floor with impatience. 

Atem decided to attack with Gaia the Fierce Knight, wiping out Saggi. Kaiba flipped over his Crush Card Virus trap, rendering every monster in his deck with over 1500 attack points useless and clearing the field of Gaia and Dark Magician as a result. His arrogant smirk was as detestable as it was alluring and Atem fought the urge to jump over the table and ring his neck out of lust or loathing or a combination of both. 

He had to keep him talking to buy time to conjure a new strategy. If he lost, it wouldn’t just be embarrassing. Kaiba would leave...

“Perfectionism is not self-improvement. Perfectionism is, at its core, about seeking approval. Healthy striving is self focused: How can I improve? Perfectionism is focused on others: What will they think of my work? One is useful. The other is not. Which question are you asking yourself?”

“Striving to beat my rivals is a form of self-improvement.” Kaiba drew a card and passed his turn.

“I thought you said you’ve already far outstripped your rivals. That you have no worthy competition. What now, then? How are you faring in your work?” Atem drew Summoned Skull, but that was useless. He summoned Silver Fang on defense to bide more time. He might not have the upperhand in their duel, but he did in their conversation.

Kaiba looked like a frog being ripped open in a biology class just to have his insides poked and prodded. Try as he might to reveal nothing he had still flashed Atem his hand. He stayed silent, perhaps for fear of divulging any more.

“I see…” Atem kicked back the last of his current drink and but didn’t immediately make moves towards the bar for yet another. Even Kaiba’s silence was heavy with meaning. Atem’s low timbre held a gentler note when he spoke again.

“Perfectionism is not a key to success, and it’s not an antidote to shame, either. When we struggle with perfectionism, we’re often truly struggling with shame.” Atem’s voice was very careful. “What are you ashamed of, Kaiba?”

“Cut the psychoanalysis bullshit, Atem, I’m not ashamed of anything! Maybe you’re projecting your own failures on to me, have you ever thought of that?” Kaiba summoned Battle Ox and easily obliterated Silver Fang. Atem was quickly running low on options… He defaulted to feigned confidence.

“I’m quite satisfied with my life’s direction, if you’re trying to trap me by deflecting it won’t work.” The pharaoh’s voice was unwaveringly even-keeled, stance steady, secretly praying for a lucky draw. 

He pulled Griffore, a monster that was at least summonable under his current restrictions, and placed him on the field. With the addition of Horn of the Unicorn, he was able to destroy Battle Ox and stay alive for another turn. Kaiba’s LP dropped to 600.

“You’re doing that thing again. Stalling when you know you’re losing by trying to get me to talk,” Kaiba drew his next card and cackled with mirth. “It doesn’t work. This game will be over soon.”

“No, _you’re_ doing that thing where you change the subject because you know I’m right.” Atem was genuinely worried. If Kaiba wasn’t bluffing, that probably meant he’d just drawn his third Blue-Eyes… It was undeniable that their game was at risk of ending before their evening had truly begun. “Stop avoiding the question.”

“I didn’t avoid the question, you just didn’t like the answer.” Kaiba played Gift of the Mystical Elf, bringing his life points back up to 900, and finally summoned his first Blue-Eyes to the field. He obliterated Griffore. Atem’s life points dropped to only 400. “I told you. I’m not ashamed of anything.”

Atem could swear his words sounded uncertain. He drew again, luckily pulling another weak monster and summoning Giant Soldier of Stone in defense mode. He only had one potential play left and the card might not even come up… If Kaiba was going to leave, he at least wanted a real answer to the question before he did. 

“You’re hopeless…” Kaiba sniggered with his latest draw. “We ought to call the game now before you embarrass yourself any more.” 

At last, as expected, Kaiba drew a polymerization card and summoned Blue-Eyes Ultimate to the field, obliterating Giant Soldier of Stone.

Time was running out. No better opportunity for a risky gambit. If his feelings were true, his next draw was destined to be a lucky one, right? Otherwise, everything between them would end on a bitter note...

He drew. Kuriboh!

Atem dared to walk their fragile conversation into ever deeper waters before playing his card.

“Kaiba…” He tested with a quiet voice, swallowing his nervousness and being sure to meet his eyes. “You aren’t… I mean, you’re not… You’re not ashamed of being gay... are you?”

“ _What?_ ” Kaiba looked nearly shocked into silence. The word was thick and he spat it out indignantly as though Atem had levied a deep personal offense. Perhaps he had. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Atem panicked, but tried to keep his cool on the surface. This was, as expected, a delicate point on some level. “It doesn’t mean anything, really, it’s just a lot of people are and--”

“No, I’m not fucking embarrassed about it. Why? Are you?” He hissed. Kaiba threw the entirety of his drink back with a trembling hand, but his words were sharp and unfaltering. 

“Umm… To be honest, I was for a long time…” Atem almost whispered. He kept his eyes on the swirling scotch in his glass on the table, toying with the cup intently instead of facing Kaiba’s burning wrath. 

“Why do you care so much what other people think? Stop that, it’s annoying.” Kaiba laid his hand face down, a temporary pause in the game, and snatched the glass away. Their fingers brushed just barely in the gesture. “God, what makes you think you should even ask!”

“It’s a natural question, your… _predilections_ were pretty obvious but you never brought it up so I just thought--”

“It’s not exactly a natural student-teacher conversation topic.” Kaiba sounded more defensive now.

“Yes but I thought we were becoming more than that. I thought we were becoming friends, and it is a natural topic for friends.” That was the truth. Atem allowed his voice to assume a subtle hint of sadness. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Atem, for the last time I’m not ashamed of being gay!” Kaiba’s anger finally exploded in its predictable fashion. “Just because I didn’t write ‘I’m queer’ on the board in neon fucking letters on the first day of class doesn’t mean it’s some big fucking secret you asshole! _Everyone knows_ ! The department knows I’m gay! My brother knows I’m gay! I just didn’t want to tell _you_ , specifically, that I was gay!”

Kaiba’s casual confirmation to Atem that he was interested in men all this time and deliberately withheld it for no reason other than his fear of what Atem might do with that information was tantamount to admitting he’d been daydreaming about fucking him since the day he stepped into his classroom. Which, for Atem’s part, was completely true. But he was also good at reading people and Atem had definitely just read that from between the lines of Kaiba’s latest admission. His wiley grin spread from ear to ear.

“That sounds like the kind of surprise revelation that may help us later, but don’t think I’m letting you off the current subject of shame that easily.” Atem leaned forward to get a better view of the detail in his shifting expressions. 

“We’re finished here.” Kaiba narrowed his glare and picked up his hand again. “Play your last pathetic card so I can go home.”

“I normal summon Kuriboh in defense position,” Atem held on to his shrewd expression.

“Kuriboh?!” Kaiba fumed. “When I said ‘pathetic’ I didn’t actually mean it! Are you even taking this game seriously or can we just end it? That weakling fluff ball is the most worthless card in the game, why do you even have it in your deck!”

“Don’t be such an asshole, I don’t have any pathetic cards in my deck!” Atem was genuinely hurt by the insult. “Kuriboh is the best defense monster. You’re just mean and uncreative!” 

“ _Mean?_ ” Kaiba laughed. “It’s a _duel monsters card_. You can’t hurt the feelings of an inanimate object.” 

“Well you can still hurt my feelings, Kuriboh is my favorite!” Atem sported an exceptionally juvenile pout.

“I thought Dark Magician was your favorite!”

“I can have more than one favorite!”

“That’s not what the word ‘favorite’ means!!” Kaiba shouted. “ARGHH! This joke of a duel is finished, my Blue-Eyes Ultima--”

“MY TURN ISN’T OVER YET!” Atem roared, almost ready to flip the coffee table. “You are a conceited jerk to absolutely everyone and I think the person you treat the worst is yourself and you are going to _lose_ this duel, Kaiba! I tribute Kuriboh to play the spell card Multiply from my ha--”

“ _WHAT???_ ”

“And summon forty Kuriboh tokens in defense position--”

“HOW MANY FUCKING COPIES OF THE KURIBOH TOKEN CARD DO YOU OWN?!?!”

“A LOT MORE THAN FORTY KAIBA I TOLD YOU HE WAS MY FAVORITE!”

“YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT!!!”

“THE MULTIPLY CARD SAYS SUMMON AS MANY AS POSSIBLE AND THEY WERE CAREFUL TO PHRASE IT THAT WAY I ABSOLUTELY CAN DO THAT!”

“THIS IS A GAME WITH RULES AND YOU ARE ABUSING THEM!”

“I prefer the term ‘creative application’ of the rules but I digress--”

“It’s a proof by abuse of notation!”

“And your stupid Crush Card Virus wasn’t? You’re just jealous because you didn’t think of it!” 

“I swear to god, Atem, if you win this duel with this asinine strategy I _will not_ consider this a fair victory and I _will_ leave!” Kaiba was absolutely beside himself with rage. 

“Just take your turn already, it’s a card game not a mortgage,” He mocked Kaiba’s earlier words.

“Sure. Fine. Whatever. Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon attacks your goddamn wall of Kuriboh tokens…” Kaiba got up to pour himself another much needed libation to sooth his temper.

“Three down, thirty-seven to go!” Atem laughed mercilessly. “I bet you regret banishing Swords of Revealing Light now.”

“It doesn’t matter you can’t summon anything with enough attack points to slay my BEWD and I will sit here all night until every one of your wimpy little Kuriboh cards is gone.” Kaiba brought back another two drinks to the coffee table.

“Then I suppose that leaves us plenty of opportunity for conversation.” Atem took a sip and drew the Living Arrow card. “Now, you said you have a brother. Does he live with you?”

Despite his boiling ire, Kaiba’s lips were looser than they’d ever been. He could try to blame the liquor but Atem knew it wasn’t just that.

It was a mystifying quality of the atmosphere. The steady, distant drone of the party upstairs and the thick wood doors ensured a privacy one couldn’t find in some thin-walled apartment, or in an academic office, or anywhere else in Domino City. Kaiba could scream and cry at Atem all he wanted and he would be the only one to hear. The entire room held a thick cloying perfume with high notes of weed and stale beer and heavenly lingering lows of spilled bourbon and the rich, warm vanilla of high-quality tobacco. 

The long pause stretched out between them.

Atem was attentive, but never quite idle. He sipped his drink or coddled the cat or straightened out his cards on the coffee table. He countered Kaiba’s feisty resistance by letting his own manner become easy. Relaxed. Patient. Kind. Encouraging Kaiba’s anxieties to ebb away in his stream of consciousness. 

He wanted to give Kaiba the impression there could be no judgment here. That he could admit to Atem all manner of secrets. That nothing he said could be worse than anything that had already been confessed by some visitor or another here, in this place, and he could only be met with nothing but unconditional compassion and understanding in return. To make his own problems start to feel a bit smaller.

“Yeah, Mokuba has lived with me since our parents died. He left for college in the fall.” A simple but uncharacteristically personal revelation. 

“Is that when you started struggling with your work?” Atem watched Kaiba’s face light up with the shock of realization and decided now was as good a time as any for his desperate gambit.

Atem normal summoned the undead monster Mammoth Graveyard and played polymerization to fuse the beast with Kaiba’s dragon using the Living Arrow card. The ‘unplayable’ fusion was set to decay BEWD by 1200 attack points every turn, but Kaiba seemed too distracted to care much one way or the other. 

“Yeah, cool summon, Blue-Eyes attacks your Kuriboh again…” He tossed back the whole drink in one go. Oh no…

“Kaiba…” He passed his turn.

“Whatever, Atem, yeah, I attack your stupid Kurioh wall, okay!” He made to stand up for another drink, already unsteady, and Atem grabbed his arm to keep him at the table.

“Just finish this duel with me, I pass my turn again,” Atem didn’t let go of his arm. 

“I don’t care, Atem, I pass too!” Kaiba had grown increasingly distressed at the topic of his brother’s absence. 

“Kaiba, how can you not care? It’s duel monsters, of course you care!” Atem drew and summoned Celtic Guardian. Now that Kaiba had let Blue-Eyes Attack points decay for three turns, she only had 900 remaining. Celtic Guardian attacked, destroying one of three original BEWD cards and dropping Kaiba’s life points to 400. 

“Kaiba!” Atem protested. “Are you really giving up?” 

“This duel doesn’t matter, it’s not like I can counter your cheap ass strategy and it’s not like winning can actually bring Mokuba back. I pass.” He gestured uncoordinatedly at the cards. Perhaps all the liquor was having a stronger effect on Kaiba’s precariously constructed walls than previously considered. 

Atem crossed over to his opponent’s sofa and sat down beside him. 

“Fine. Celtic Guardian attacks another Blue-Eyes. Your LP drop to 0, but this duel doesn’t count! You have to promise me we will play again!”

“Yeah, alright, I’ll kick your ass next time.” His heart wasn’t in his words. 

“Kaiba…” Atem picked up his hand. “Are you ashamed of missing your brother?”

He nodded stiffly, lip wobbling with the effort of composure, and downing the last of Atem’s drink on reflex. That certainly wouldn’t bode well for his emotional state. 

“Of course you miss your brother! That’s not something to be embarrassed about,” Atem fought the urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of that admission for fear it would certainly be misconstrued. “I’d argue it’s something to be proud of. Most people would consider oikeiôsis a profound and virtuous force, and the heart of what makes us just. It drives us to think beyond our own self-interests. That’s a good thing.”

“I don’t know what that philosophical bullshit means.” Kaiba sniffed as though he might be holding back tears.

“It’s the essence of endearment and the desire to possess and be possessed in turn. The desire to have people and experiences that belong to us and to belong and be understood by someone in return. It begins with our ownership of our perception of the world and extends with time to our family, and to our friends.” Atem set his head on his shoulder and played with the lines of his hands. He hoped Kaiba was listening, but maybe hearing someone’s voice might be enough.

“It’s universal invariant of the human experience, and to deny it is to deny what separates us from the beasts.”

“I don’t need other people.” Kaiba closed his hand around Atem’s, creating a stark dichotomy to his words. 

“Then perhaps you’re a beast.” Atem chuckled. That didn’t seem to go over well with his audience. He picked his head up to meet Kaiba’s eyes. “I never said anything about needing other people…”

Their faces were very close together now, and Kaiba’s breathing picked up to an uneven tempo.

“I said we desire belonging and understanding, and I’d contend there’s a certain eroticism in feeling understood.” Atem looked at Kaiba’s lips and his cold hand tightened even further around his own. “I didn’t say need, I said want, and sometimes it’s okay to have the things we want.”

It was Kaiba who closed the final distance, first only a diffident breeze of dry lips and the brush of his tongue when he hurried to lick them wet. Then a second try, ample ardor, devoid of rhythm, and Atem let go of his hands to coax his head into picking a side.

Atem tried to reciprocate with tenderness, but Kaiba’s insistence was taking no suggestions so he buried his hands in his hair and struggled to mirror all of his irrational hungry movements and the delicious inelegant smacking sounds warmed the air around them. He pulled his hair. Kaiba copied, only harder, and Atem smiled and laughed into his lips.

“What?” Kaiba stiffened as though it were a critique.

“Nothing, I’m just happy.” The airy words came out with faces so close his lips stuck against the other’s with certain sounds. “Am I allowed to be happy?”

“You’re allowed to be anything if you shut up while you do it,” Kaiba was already out of breath and predictably relentless, begging to pick up where they left off. Atem indulged him briefly before sinking his teeth in his lip, earning a shocked and blissful gasp.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” He mumbled into Kaiba’s kiss-swollen mouth, which was of course, taken as a challenge and any lingering delicate pretenses fell away in favor of a feverish alternative.

Atem threw one leg over Kaiba’s lap and was met with no objections except over the distance between their bodies and Kaiba pulled him chest to chest into a clumsy open-mouthed kiss. Atem basked in the delirious ecstasy of this long-awaited catharsis, moaning against Kaiba’s tongue when he ran his hands up his thighs and under his tunic. 

Kaiba wasn’t known for his patient nature and that certainly wasn’t any different now. He pulled the whole costume off with no teasing or ceremony, leaving Atem exposed in his boxers and his replica Egyptian accessories. Kaiba ran his covetous hands from his hips to his neck, giving an inadvertent whine at the sight.

“You like it?” Atem teased.

“You’re so arrogant,” Kaiba murmured into the skin where he pressed his lips to the tattoo over Atem’s ribs. He fought the urge of ticklishness under the caress of his fingers.

“But you _like it_.” 

“It’s hot.” He allowed. Atem would make him remember those words.

He dragged his face back to his, gluing them together in another disarray of shared air. He raked his fingers down Kaiba’s back and around again to the front, pleasantly surprised to find Kaiba to be exceptionally muscular for someone who claimed to while away the days exclusively in the company of numbers. The hows and whys of this development were trivialities to be explored at a later date and the only thing worthy of exploration now was the delicious curve of every chiseled turn. 

Atem fumbled for the edge of the turtleneck as Kaiba had done with his tunic, but shaking hands pushed his away. Kaiba swallowed into their kiss momentarily before continuing with compensatory fervor.

Fine, the shirt stays on.

The brief thought as to _why_ brought his attention to several other peculiarities. Kaiba’s grip was white knuckled on Atem’s thighs and his movements were at odds with his usual self, much too pliant and complacent to match his eternally argumentative attitude. The kiss was eager but far too sloppy to match Kaiba’s precise nature and his breath tasted like juniper when in his imagination it had always been coffee instead. The details painted the wrong picture and the pleasant moment was tainted with a bittersweet reality. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen.

“Kaiba…” He sighed against his lips with an unfortunate reluctance. Why did every happy instance between them have to be so ill fated? “We shouldn’t do this.” He struggled against the magnetism ghosting between their faces and stared mesmerized as Kaiba’s deep blue eyes fluttered open into a taunting expression.

“Isn’t that what makes it fun?” Kaiba probably thought he was referring to the profesor problem. He couldn’t reconnect with Atem’s lips and settled for his neck instead. Despite his pleased gasp, he knotted his fingers in his chestnut hair in restraint. Kaiba looked up, face twisted into an uneasy expression and his fingers dug tight enough into Atem’s legs to leave thumb-print bruises. “Or you don’t…”

“No, of course I want to!” Gods, Kaiba was so sensitive to any form of criticism. Atem’s heart twisted at the thought of where that skittish nature came from. He cupped his face and gratified him with another reassuring kiss that was equally difficult to break away from. “That’s not what I’m talking about, I just meant tonight.”

Despite the words, they didn’t stop. It was just too easy to indulge when Kaiba was so willing to give. Atem let Kaiba’s arms snake around his waist and allowed the heavy warmth to envelop him when he laid them down on the sofa. He buried his face in the crook of his neck and pulled him closer.

“Please…” Kaiba whispered. He crushed him so tight Atem worried his ribs might snap under the pressure. His stomach churned. Kaiba was only pushing himself to prove something out of fear… Of what? Losing some twisted game? Losing Atem?

Atem tried to memorize every detail of the embrace in case his next words scared him off forever and this moment never came around again. Kaiba would be grateful later, even if his pride never let him admit it. He kissed under his ear first, the only skin reachable over his turtleneck, leaving a memorable pink welt.

“Kaiba…” He phrased the words as clear yet ginger as possible. “It’s not because I don’t want to with you, but we can’t make love tonight.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Kaiba scoffed and bristled with the unavoidable casualty of perceived rejection. “This was only ever a fuck.”

Atem knew he didn’t mean it; anger was Kaiba’s comfort zone. He only said it because he was hurting and wanted him to hurt just as bad but that didn’t make it any easier to hear.

“You’re missing the point, as always,” He roped his fingers fiercely in Kaiba’s hair, preventing him from snapping back and forcing him to look him in the eye. “You’ve had a lot to drink, you don’t know what you want.”

“What do you know about what I want?” He spat back. He lifted his weight up and returned to the defiant act of his reverent tracing over his tattoos and ribs and stomach, satisfied with the way Atem keened under the attention.

Atem was placed in a terribly unfair position between what Kaiba wanted and what was in his best interest. Lying to him and saying he didn’t enjoy this would immediately get him to stop and was certainly an option but felt equally cruel in the face of his deceptively fragile ego. 

“You’re right, I wouldn’t know,” He growled out, swallowing a depraved moan. “Because you refuse to talk to me about what’s bothering you like a normal person!”

“You never shut up, do you?” Kaiba leaned forward to kiss him silent and Atem swallowed every ounce of desperate breath, all teeth and tongue. He migrated to his neck, punctuating all of Atem’s next words with sharp bites.

“You’re the worst— _Aaah!_ —Why are you like this?— _nnnh..._ —I don’t know what I see in you.” He felt Kaiba’s weight heavy on his hips and there was no way he couldn’t sense the irresistible effect he was having on him and Atem gave a languid groan of lust and frustration when Kaiba sank his teeth into his collarbone almost hard enough to break skin. How did he know he liked that? Maybe Kaiba liked all the same things… That thought wasn’t helping the situation. “You aren’t making this any easier for me.”

Kaiba touched his icy fingertip to the heated almost-wound with a look of curiosity and Atem hissed at the pleasant temperature difference.

“I disagree, I don’t know how I could make this any more obvious.” He said before sitting up and reaching for his own clothes.

Atem’s patience was wearing extraordinarily thin. Anyone with a shred of experience or common decency would know this was entirely unacceptable behavior. Unless… His heart sank into his stomach.

Unless it was someone who had no experience to draw on. Someone who came from a sick, twisted upbringing and honestly thought this sort of bravado was not just acceptable but expected.

Kaiba’s shaking hands dithered on the hem of his shirt, evidently weighing the necessity of forcing himself to do something he’d already made clear he did not want to do.

“Kaiba…” Atem pulled his hands away and kept them firm in his own. He put on his best comforting expression, which was undoubtedly lack luster from one surrendered belly-up wearing nothing but boxers and costume jewelry, and tread on gentle footing. “Have you ever…been with a man?”

Kaiba looked stricken with humiliation and tried to jerk his hands free, but Atem didn’t let him. His face flushed red and he looked away, opening and closing his mouth as though debating his words before he bit out a furious reply.

“I haven’t ever _been with_ anyone,” His words were full of fire, but his eyes pricked to hide the verge of tears. “Why does it even matter?!”

“It… It doesn’t!” Atem struggled to escape Kaiba’s weight and sit up straight without letting go of his hands. “But I’m not doing this with you right now, you really don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“How stupid do you think I am?” He recoiled, successfully snatching his hands back and wrapping them around himself instead.

“I don’t think you’re stupid!” Atem gave chase when Kaiba fled to the safe distance across the couch. “It’s the opposite problem!”

“Is this your way of letting me down easy because you think I’m some kind of loser?!” Kaiba’s stability was all but shattered and Atem worried if he’d ruined everything by trying to do the right thing.

“Of course not! Stop being ridiculous!” He tried desperately to get Kaiba to open up again but he refused to be touched. At this point Atem felt like crying, too. “If you were experienced then I would have you for your skill but since you aren’t I would have you for the intimacy of your innocence but none of that matters! You have no idea how much I want this, but you are _drunk_ and _unreasonable_ and I have _your exam_ on Monday morning and, gods, Kaiba I have to put my foot down!”

A stiff silence hung in the air and Kaiba shook him off one more time before standing up from the sofa.

“Fine. I get it.” He picked his cards up off the coffee table with a well-practiced indifference and made for the door.

“I’m not throwing you out, please stay!” Atem followed and grabbed his arm in a last-ditch pleading effort to salvage a terrible situation. “It’s late and you shouldn’t be driving, or walking home either, really--”

“I’m leaving.” He stared at the doorknob but didn’t jerk his arm away.

“You promised me your company for the whole evening if I won.” Atem tried, preying on Kaiba’s faithfulness in upholding the terms of their bet.

“That’s a cheap tactic.” Kaiba flipped his feet over and back with indecision.

“Is it working?” Atem gave a gentle smile. His deep voice was hardly above a whisper. “Please stay. We can just sleep.”

“That’s… That’s ridiculous!” Kaiba balked, red in the face once again. “That’s too…”

“Too intimate? Maybe you need that more than a good screw anyway.” Atem gave his hand a soft squeeze.

He led him back into the room and was met with no words but also no resistance. Kaiba kicked his shoes off along the way and Atem released his hand with a silent welcoming gesture towards the bed. He turned away, giving Kaiba a moment’s privacy to wrestle with his discomfort at the prospect. He grabbed the ice bucket, long since melted and full of water, and doused the fire in a hiss of ash and steam.

“That’s not how you’re supposed to do that…” Kaiba grumbled. He was sitting down with a dizzy sway when Atem turned around.

“Well it certainly assures this place won’t burn down in our sleep.” Atem smiled at the way Kaiba squirmed over the use of the word ‘our’. He picked up two of the cleanest looking glasses. “I’ll be right back.”

Atem took far longer than he needed to fill two cups of water in the bathroom sink in the hopes Kaiba’s high strung anxiety would relax a bit given a moment to himself. His own was only getting worse. He could never be the right person when Kaiba was around.

His reflection suddenly felt very mocking in the mirror and he shed all the golden trinkets on the counter. He tried to wipe off the kohl liner and made a terrific smeared mess. When the black was washed away the tired hollows under his eyes stood out all the more prominent. His hair was flat. The lines of his ribs showed through his shirtless skin. Kaiba certainly wouldn’t have any interest in jumping his bones now, which was one problem solved.

When he returned, Kaiba’s jeans were on the floor and he’d made himself comfortable on the bed next to one of the side tables, holding some of the papers he found there in his hands with his knees pulled up to his chest. Bast must have had a sixth sense for and appreciated his feline disagreeability because the cat was settled beside him. She even tolerated the way his curious finger poked her ears, eliciting a tiny flick.

“You’re not supposed to let animals on the bed. It’s poor training,” He said.

“Cats are sacred beasts, she goes where she pleases,” Atem chuckled while making his way around the room to cut all the lights but the two at the bedside. “Here.”

He offered Kaiba one of the glasses, but he looked nervous again when he crawled up to join him.

“I can sleep on the sofa if you want,” Atem offered.

“No… No, it’s okay… Stay.” Kaiba drank some of the water and scowled back at the papers which were something he felt more comfortable with. Atem settled beside him to steal a glance. “This proof is a hideous mess.”

“You’re not supposed to see that! It’s just practice!” He tried to snatch the papers, but Kaiba’s wingspan outstretched his own.

“Bullet points? Really? Have I taught you nothing?” Kaiba sounded chastising but he was smiling.

“Whatever, are you going to at least tell me what’s wrong with it?” Atem pouted and gave up trying to hide his embarrassing rough drafts.

“No private tutoring,” Kaiba had a light joking to his tone when he put the paper back on the pile, turned the lamp off, and made a show of lying down under the covers with his back to Atem. “Office hours only.”

“Ever the strict disciplinarian…” He cut his own light out and settled down with a calculated distance between their bodies. “Or do you just need an excuse to see me?”

Kaiba didn’t answer right away but Atem could hear him flip over to face his direction in the dark.

“Don’t fail. You’ll disappoint me.” There was a fragility hidden in his voice.

“I’ll endeavor not to, but I think that’s on you as much as it is on me.” Atem hoped his reassuring smile could be heard since it couldn’t be seen.

A soft rustling suggested Kaiba’s movements before a cold hand found his under the sheets and asked an unspoken question with a very tentative tug. Atem replied by carefully inching closer. When the other didn’t flinch away, he pulled Kaiba’s head to his chest, arms and legs sheltering his larger frame, and buried his nose in his downy hair.

“This bed is so hot. How do you live like this?” Kaiba squirmed. He must be feeling vulnerable for wanting the attention.

“I didn’t tell you to wear a wool turtleneck,” Atem hummed and tightened his grip. “I don’t like to be cold.”

“How could you ever be cold? You’re a furnace.”

“Shut up and go to sleep, Kaiba.”

He stopped wiggling and hesitantly returned the embrace. Eventually, his breathing stilled and within minutes Atem drifted off too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: What I appreciate about this ship is that even in cannon, despite all their surface-level disagreements, Atem and Kaiba’s relationship is built on a rock-solid foundation of mutual respect and I wanted to showcase that in this fic before they ‘get together’. 
> 
> In this story, Kaiba and Atem each have a unique sort of power dynamic over the other (Kaiba obviously being the professor but Atem being more sexually open and experienced). Both are given the chance to abuse that power with virtually no threat of consequence or punishment, and both chose not to out of mutual respect for the other. Kaiba has the chance to change Atem’s exam score after their fight, but he doesn’t. Atem has the chance to take advantage of Kaiba when he’s drunk, but he doesn’t.


	9. Perfect Numbers Are Like Perfect Men

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Perfect numbers, like perfect men, are very rare.” --[René Descartes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes), philosopher and mathematician
> 
> [Perfect number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_number): An integer that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors.  
> Ex: 6 = 1 + 2 + 3 and 28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14

Atem woke up empty handed. 

Earlier than usual but evidently too late with the full force of Sunday morning streaming in through the curtains he never kept open. Someone else left them that way. The same someone who had forgotten a pair of reading glasses beside an empty cup of water, who left a ghostly indent in the other pillow and the sheets turned back on the opposite side of the bed. 

Kaiba was gone.

It was difficult to say when, but if he’d drawn back the shades he guessed after sunrise, which had to be later than Kaiba usually slept. Perhaps six or seven?

Atem groaned before turning over to check the time on his phone, only to find a torn off scrap of paper sitting beside it. Two words, in precise and familiar scrawl:

_Disappointing._

_\--Seto_

He dropped the note on the nightstand with a defeated finality, pulling the sheets back over his head to block out the world and drawing his knees to his chest. He grabbed for the other pillow, a rock to cling to in the brewing storm of heartbreak, and was dismayed to find that under the lingering scent of liquor it still smelled of coffee, old hardwood, and the musty essence of paper and stale indoor air. 

Atem cried.

The soft creak as the door peeled open on the hinge could hardly be heard over the quiet hiccups escaping from the lump under the sheets as someone tiptoed over the threshold.

“Atem, are you up?” Yugi whispered. “I’m not trying to wake the sleeping dragon if he’s still here but you don’t have a monopoly on the room. I need to grab my--”

He could almost imagine Yugi assessing the current state of affairs, notably, one hungover bed lump--not two--curled in a ball of blankets with a wounded whimper that couldn’t be swallowed all the way down. Atem’s cheeks stung warm with tears and embarrassment. He wasn’t looking forward to any judgement now.

“Go away...” Atem burrowed deeper into the hill of pillows and his grumble was muffled in the down. He heard the shuffling of Yugi by the bedside and the rustling of the paper note before the mattress sank down with another weight and his brother’s arms wrapped around him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Yugi offered. He didn’t try to pull back the sheets, but Atem tightened his grip and stiffened up anyhow.

“No. Go away.” Atem said but didn’t make any effort to shy away from his brother’s embrace either. 

“I’ll buy you breakfast if you come out of there.” Certainly an offer he couldn’t refuse. 

“No.” Atem’s voice didn’t sound any less gloomy than before, but a bit more sniffled. 

Yugi saddled up beside him and let the morning quiet fall between them with a familiarity that it hadn’t known in a good while. A long time ago, their positions would have been reversed. Their relationship had grown up with them.

“Atem…” He scratched at the tuft of red-tipped hair poking out from beneath the covers. “The longer you hide the more it will hurt.”

The lump gave a huff and a puff but didn’t protest so Yugi pressed on, rolling him over and tangling him into a bed-sheet burrito.

“There will be hashbrowns, greasy ones, with diabetes and american kraft singles,” Another flip, another groan, this one less melancholy.

“And eggs over-easy.” Flip. “Sunny-side up.” Flip. “Bacon, if you want that too, I don’t care if it’s three dollars extra.” 

He pushed Atem over the edge and onto the floor, the fall padded only by the wrapping of the comforter. Laughter escaped the heap, even if it was clear he was trying to suppress it to preserve his dour aura. Yugi made for the dresser and started tossing over a ratty old duel monsters tournament shirt, a well-worn pair of acid wash jeans, miss-matched socks…

“Hurry up the line’s gonna be ridiculous and I’m starving.” 

“I just think it’s funny that he forgot his glasses but he didn’t forget his cards.” Atem finished regaling his twin with tales from his evening with Kaiba, tripping over the words as he stuffed down another mouthful of fried potatoes. 

“Sounds oddly familiar...” Yugi chuckled, bumping his dangling feet against the chrome legs of the diner barstools. He took another bite of his omelet. "But I think you did the right thing."

"Sure doesn't feel like it..." He sighed. Comfort food might treat the symptoms of the problem, but it wasn’t the cure. 

“Atem, don’t take this as my approval of your student-teacher relationship, but I don’t think that note means what you think it means.” Yugi flashed a knowing grin, but his brother wasn’t looking up to meet it.

“What it _means_ is he hates me. I can’t believe it’s too late to drop the class...” He grumbled, tracing a finger around the edge of the coffee mug and trying not to dwell on the memories tied to the smell. 

“To me it sounds like he’s disappointed that you didn’t sleep together--”

“We _did_ sleep together,” Atem countered, just to rile him up.

“Fine, disappointed you didn’t bang or whatever,” Yugi blushed. “And he signed it with his first name, that’s kind of a huge deal.”

“No it’s not. I call most my philosophy professors by their first names now that I’m a senior.” Atem snapped the bacon into bits with pointed fork stabs, deeply focused on stirring them into what remained of his hashbrowns. 

“What do you call him in his office?”

“Kaiba,” He admitted.

“He always made _me_ call him Professor Kaiba…” Yugi grumbled into his food.

“Pfft, ‘professor’ my ass, it’s not like he has an appointment in the department,” Atem said, taking another bite while mulling over his line of excuses. “But he probably just signed it that way to distance himself from the whole teacher thing so it's less weird.”

“You know for as much effort as you go through to learn Arabic and read ancient Egyptian runes and all that would it kill you to put a _little_ effort into appreciating the culture of our Japanese side?” 

“They aren’t ‘runes’ first of all and Japan is your half of this twinship, Aibou. We visit grandpa every summer. That’s enough big city time for me.” 

“Well if you paid any attention at all you’d know it’s insanely rude to call someone by their first name, even your best friends!” Yugi had polished off his food and propped his feet up on the rungs below his brother’s stool, crossing his arms with indignation. 

“I don’t think Kaiba has many friends...”

“That’s not the point. I bet the only other person he lets call him that is his brother.”

“How’d you know he had a brother?” 

“Please, that picture is the only human item he keeps in his office and it sure isn’t of his son.” Yugi rolled his eyes. “I didn’t think copulation was in his programming til you got involved.”

He let out a peal of laughter when Atem nearly succeeded in throwing him out of his seat with a hard shove to the shoulder. 

“Seriously though, I think this is the closest you’re gonna get to a ‘call me’ from a guy like that.” He gave Atem a reassuring and hopeful smile before sneakily stealing the last of his coffee.

“Hey!” Too late. He’d have to flag the waitress for a refill. Atem gave a wistful sigh. “He could have at least left a phone number…”

* * *

Kaiba let the fingers of hot water run rivulets down his chest, eyes shut with soggy brown hair matted over them anyway. He sat on the floor, knees bent, the basin too narrow to stretch them out all the way. His back was pressed to the cool white tile, one cracked shard prying off the backerboard and digging into his shoulder blade. His fingers were growing pruned and the pale skin of his arms and legs flushed and mottled from the heat, but he was determined to remain unmoved until the water heater was emptied. He reached up for the spigot, cutting off the cold water completely, and watched the steam rise up in clouds that warmed the lungs.

He shut his eyes again with a heavy groan, head still aching like he’d undergone a botched lobotomy, palpably pulsing in his skull. Under the soothing white noise of the shower he finally allowed his thoughts the dangerous liberty of reflecting on the night before.

He hadn’t quite formulated an opinion yet as to whether or not he was grateful he remembered everything. He might be spared the desperate detective work on his unknown actions that came with blacking out, but in exchange he was left to wallow in the pit of his own self-abasement. It was difficult to assign a responsible party to the nausea that threatened to introduce itself to the shower floor.

The anxiety? The hangover? The black coffee on an empty stomach?

Maybe it would have been better to forget, he thought, until the brilliant crystalline memory of Atem’s smile stapled to his lips came rushing back into his bloodstream, sweeping his heart up into his throat, and there was nothing he wouldn’t give to render the moment indelible. 

Every touch on Atem’s radiant russet skin came with a perfect warmth as though his pores leaked summer sunlight and even the boiling temperatures of the water left him feeling cold by comparison. He could have almost believed that every loose lipped sacrifice that had led to that moment had been worth the steep price.

All but one.

He’d wanted to. God, he _still_ wanted to, even now, naked and languishing in his own indignities.

It was hardly a matter of wanting. Wanting had been surpassed so long ago it had become immaterial. It was a matter of trust, and he didn’t trust himself not to ruin everything, again, like he’d already ruined everything more than once before.

Atem was right. He had no idea what he was doing.

The grip of humiliation at recalling those words was nearly the final undoing on his stomach, but his arms wrapped around his torso and held it in. He allowed himself the weakness of tears where the water would mask them even from himself.

He didn’t even know the etiquette about staying. Was he supposed to wait for Atem to wake up? Was that overstaying his welcome? Were there rules of etiquette governing the morning after a hook-up missing the defining characteristic?

Some part of him had been desperate to stay, frozen in the soft spell of the morning trapped in the cage of Atem’s thin arms. To lie still in the sheets that smelled musky and slept-in, of incense and coriander, while his piercing headache faded in the sparse light of the morning, lolled in and out of the most perfect dream by the metronome of Atem’s even breathe.

But his mouth tasted foul and some crawling anxiety woke up with the dawn like ants under his skin and suddenly everything was far too warm to be comfortable. His sweat felt sticky. His chest heaved for air, constricted under the weight Atem’s arms.

Fear, at being stuck in an unknown place in a compromising position.  
Terror, that whenever Atem woke up, his smile would be replaced with regret.

It no longer mattered which option, staying or leaving, was more ill-mannered. Every passing moment beside the lazily napping Schrodinger’s cat was driving him closer to the cliff of panic. His shallow breathing was getting a little too fast, a little too urgent, a little too loud.

He couldn’t bring himself to stay if he wanted to.

So he didn’t.

Beyond Atem’s door, the rank stench of sweat and spilled alcohol that had baked overnight clung to the house, but it was eerily silent. The cars had cleared off the street, the lawn was empty of everything save beer cans, and it’s hardly a walk of shame if no one is around to watch you go.

The water was making steady progress from lukewarm to outright cold and Kaiba peeled his body off the tile. By now it was midafternoon and Atem was awake and had made his decision as to whether he hated him for last night, hated him for leaving, or both.

He would rewrite the test anyway. There was something about Atem… 

After every defeat, he still wanted to play again.

* * *

Atem assumed his post on the fifth floor of the library at his habitual carrel in an outcrop with a window overlooking the quad. Despite the view, this floor was rarely occupied when the heat was running. All the hot air rose to the top floor with no escape, rendering it intolerably warm to most students.

Just the way he liked it.

He settled himself in for the long haul with a monolithic stack of annotated readings (it was an open note exam after all), Yugi’s noise-cancelling headphones, a water bottle, enough pencils and paper to write a Victorian novel, and not one but two cups of coffee. 

Algebra. Groups. Combinatorics. René Descartes. Cartesian coordinates. Functions.

Atem slogged his way through the gauntlet of the first four problems from eight Monday night to… what was it now? Six AM on Tuesday? It was so easy to lose track of time with Kaiba’s work…

He dug the little pink pencil eraser into the tip of his nose, staring into the whites of the pages and struggling to stay focused. He gave an exhausted yawn. Time for the home stretch.

Question Five.  
Kaiba always saved his stickiest wicket for question five, exams and homework alike.

  1. _Find the smallest cubefree taxicab number with three representations._



“Fuck!” Atem cursed a bit too loudly, earning glares from several other students in the neighboring carrels. He gestured to them apologetically. 

What the hell kind of impossible, inane, unsolvable nightmare was that supposed to be, Kaiba? He had only mentioned the concept of taxicab numbers offhandedly to start with. Just a 'fun fact' when the number 1729 came up in a problem they were going over in class. Sure, he’d taken a brief detour in the lecture to talk about the story of their origin and their general definition, but it had never seemed important enough to be on the exam!

Fine. Taxicab numbers. Just another puzzle. Integers that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes. 

The example from class was 1729 = 1^3 + 12^3 = 9^3 + 10^3

That’s a taxicab number with only two representations, 1^3 + 12^3 and 9^3 + 10^3. He needed to find one with three. 

Of course Kaiba wouldn’t make the question that simple. He threw in the additional restriction ‘cubefree’ and frankly Atem pitied the rest of the class. He only knew cubefree meant ‘not divisible by a cube’ because he’d gotten Kaiba on an office hours rant once where he’d mentioned it in passing. His classmates were probably at a total loss, Kaiba had to know that.

It was true, though; Kaiba wasn’t stupid. He had to know Atem was the only one in the class with a ghost of a chance at solving this coming into the exam. 

_Don’t fail. You’ll disappoint me._

A deliberate choice then. This question was the real test. 

Step One to solving a math problem: don’t panic. Step Two (Atem’s Step Two, Kaiba’s anointed Step One--he was immune to panic, apparently): write down everything you know.

x^3 + y^3 = a and that was true for three unique (x,y) pairs. Not much to go on. 

There was probably a nifty, meaningful strategy for solving this equation out there that Atem wasn’t mathematically well equipped enough to know. But Kaiba had said before that an unfair challenge was the opposite of a good one. He wasn’t in the business of failing students for not knowing things, just in the business of failing them for not thinking creatively enough. There was definitely a work around that he was completely capable of exploiting if Kaiba was capable of dreaming it up.

He could brute force it. Choose some arbitrarily large number, maybe 3000, and compute x^3 + y^3 for every possible combination of x and y between 0 and 3000 and pick out any number a that came up exactly three times. 3000^3 + 3000^3 gave him an upper bound of 54 billion, and he was pretty secure in the notion that Kaiba’s mystery integer was less than that.

That still left nine million possible combinations! Atem would be stuck at this desk until his bones became the dust of the earth writing that out by hand. Unless Kaiba never planned for him to do it by hand, and that was the true meta ‘fuck you’ to this entire problem.

Kaiba was forcing him to use the computer.  
This was another battle in the endless War on Technology between them.

Calculators were banned in class. Computers (or as Kaiba tried to make him feel better by calling them ‘logic slave machines’) were allowed if you included your code and reasoning. They’d spent a whole week in Mathematica. He insisted this was integral practice in understanding your own argument, to be able to write it out in clearly delineated and impartially interpretable logical steps. That learning to be comfortable with automating the mind-numbing and menial tasks of arithmetic would prove useful to them long after they left his class.

That yes, Atem, whether you chose it or not you do live in the 21st century and the issue of using a computer to efficiently solve a time-consuming problem will inevitably follow you even if you do succeed in squandering your talents on philosophy.

Kaiba issued three assignments during their section on combinatorics that ‘required’ the use of Mathematica. Atem spited his problem set by staying up until 3 AM working out all 1326 unique ways you could be dealt your hole cards in a game of Texas Hold’em by hand with an actual, physical deck of cards.

Kaiba laughed, swore he would live to regret this stupidity. He was right.

Nine million calculations could not be worked out by hand, sans error, before the end of the semester. At ten thousand calculations a second, the computer would be done in fifteen minutes…

Atem sighed, opened his laptop, fingers hovering over the keyboard like the coils on a hot stove, and channeled his inner Yugi. He imagined him there looking over his shoulder while he solved a problem that lay more in his domain. Sometimes, he wished he had the power to trade places with his twin. Three lines. A simple problem. Really, that’s all it would take.

“Just think of them as sentences…” He grumbled under his breath, typing out the short commands.

First try: syntax error. Second try: syntax error. Third try…

The white console window spit out numbers faster than he could read them, lines rolling on and on while the scroll bar became smaller and smaller. Atem let the code run its course. He stared out the window, watching the sun poke its head out over the Tuesday morning horizon. He wondered absently if Kaiba was already in his office at this hour, in another building, at a different desk, watching it too.

The rain of numbers came to an abrupt and unceremonious halt and after a pause as though the computer itself were stuck on the final lines, spit out two integers. 87,539,319 was the smallest number with three representations, but that was obviously a red herring for anyone who might have made it this far. It was divisible by 9 and so didn’t meet the ‘cubefree’ restriction. Only one option left:

15,170,835,645

= 517^3 + 2468^3

= 709^3 + 2456^3

= 1733^3 + 2152^3

At last, after hours of logic, guess and check, renting a calculator from the reference desk, and much belaboring over the code, Atem had finally arrived at a satisfactory answer. He glowered at the menacing little integer that had given him so much grief and loss of sleep. 

He remembered Kaiba telling the origin story of taxicab numbers in class. Allegedly, when Hardy went to visit Ramanujan while the Indian number theory prodigy had fallen ill, he remarked that he had ridden over in a taxi with a rather dull number: 1729. Ramanujan disagreed, saying all numbers had something meaningful about them if you knew how to look. In particular, this number was the smallest integer expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways. 

For whatever reason, Atem wasn’t sure why, Kaiba seemed to find this anecdote extremely amusing. 

He glared at the number again in disdain. Despite its ‘intriguing’ mathematical property, for all the effort it required, this one felt decidedly plain. From where Atem was sitting, the only remotely curious thing about it was that 517, the Domino City area code, was embedded near the beginning. 

Wait. 

He wouldn’t. It couldn’t possibly…

_All numbers are meaningful if you know how to look._

+1 517-083-5645

A Domino City cell phone number. 

Atem couldn’t contain his manic laughter, delirious with exhaustion after the sleepless night and positively beaming with butterflies at the thought that maybe Yugi had been right after all.

By the time Atem was ready to leave the library, the ground floor was full in its habitual mid-morning swing, far too boisterous to deserve the title of library. Every table was packed with students, chairs pulled out every which way, creating a certifiable fire hazard that blocked most of the walking space.

“Ugh, I can’t believe we’ve only worked out one question…”

He dodged a table with three girls, littered with a menagerie of cutesy notes and colored highlighters and fresh Starbucks, detouring between some stacks of long outdated medical journals.

“Just let it go, he’s gonna beat your score again.”  
“Who’s gonna beat her score?”  
“The hot guy with the weird hair. Adam?”

“Atem.” He froze when the blonde one he recognized from Kaiba’s class said his name, catching a glimpse of her Chinese-red glasses through the shelves. “Whatever, he probably cheats anyway.”

_What?!_

“Isn’t he the president of Delta House? I thought he was gay.”  
“Just because he’s gay doesn’t mean I can’t think he’s hot.”

One of the other two was the brunette Kaiba had sent off crying… He’d assumed she dropped the class, but evidently not. He didn’t recognize the third one, even from class. Maybe she skipped a lot.

“Can you two shut up and work?! Do you want my help on this exam or not?” The blonde one’s shrill mannerisms sounded weirdly familiar…

Oh, so they could share answers, but _he_ was the cheater? Atem laughed to himself. They’d get caught when Kaiba saw their matched set of shoddy work.

“Aww, Becky, are you still sore his brother shot you down freshman year? I thought you’d be over that by now.”

“I told you not to call me that anymore! It’s _Rebecca_.” The Hawkins girl. That’s why he remembered her… “I don’t care about Yugi and his stupid frat boy brother or their Greek life soap opera. I care about passing this test.”

“Yeah good luck with that.”  
“Don’t you think these questions are super weird even for this class? Like, the answer to the second one is ‘tea’? And the one about the train and the last one are the only questions that actually have numbers in them.”  
“Does anything in this class have numbers in it?”  
“I never thought I’d say this but I’m starting to wish it did.”

Atem wasn’t listening to them anymore, he was busy flipping back through his test. They were right; the answers were unusual, even for one of Kaiba’s problem sets…

  1. …for all ( _u + m_ ) ∊ ℚ. QED
  2. Coffee
  3. Wednesday
  4. 6
  5. +1 517-083-5645



He turned the pages, three times, four times, double checking his work again, unable to believe that he had almost missed it. Atem sank to the floor between the bookshelves, hands clutched tight enough to crinkle the papers pressed to his chest, face burning again with an unrestrainable smile.

Not just a phone number.

A date.

* * *

**_Unknown:_ ** _Who in Domino City did you have to kill to get this number, Ramanujan?_

Kaiba couldn’t resist the elated grin that broke over his face when he read the notification glowing on the screen. He licked his lips, shifting in his seat and struggling to suppress his happy laughter. 

“What’s so amusing, Kaiba-boy?” Pegasus paused his prattling and earned a little jump of shock from the usually unflappable member of the table. Off-guard, Kaiba betrayed himself by going red in the face. 

“Maybe you did take my advice after all, hmm?” The other colleagues from the research group furrowed their brows in confusion, but their PI gave a knowing smile. He chose his words carefully. “Whoever _they_ are… it can wait.” 

Kaiba huffed to himself, shoving his phone back in his pocket and simmering in his seat. There were battles to pick with his advisor, but he preferred them without an audience. There were only thirty minutes left in the group’s literature review meeting. Tolerable, with a touch of patience. 

Pegasus turned back to the board, chalk in hand, writing out some esoteric commentary on another student’s project. It wasn’t his. He couldn’t care less. 

He scribbled absently on his legal pad, letting the fountain pen feather the blue-black ink into the yellow leaves, pondering a reply. No, he couldn’t reply of course. Not until the exam was turned in, otherwise he’d reveal that the answer was correct. Not that Atem seemed to harbor any doubts with himself anyhow. 

Or it might not have been Atem… There was always a chance--

No. There wasn’t. Of course it was Atem. 

There was, naturally, the chance that he wouldn’t reveal the full note or even if he had he could misinterpret it or even if he didn’t he could still stand him up. 

He had left him, afterall... What would it matter if he got the answers right? He might not even come. What if he didn’t come? Why would he even _want_ to come? He could still stand him up, _of course_ he would stand him up. Why would he come? He’d left! He wouldn’t come, of course he wouldn’t, _he wouldn’t_ , he would stand him up, he’d stand him up, _stand him up_ , stand-him-up-standhimupstandhimupstan--

“Kaiba!” 

He snapped back to reality at the grating trill of Pegasus’s voice carrying through the room. Everyone was looking his way, expecting an answer he wasn’t equipped to give. He swallowed.

“We were discussing Amelda’s latest paper over in Moscow. You’ve read it?” Must be feeling generous today, the silver fox gave him a free pass on his moonwalk. 

“Yeah, of course I’ve read it. I don’t live under a rock.” Kaiba spat back. “What, you want yet another shitty retelling of Brouwer's fixed point theorem somewhere it never belonged? Should we all take a field trip back to undergrad? Please, that drivel isn’t worth the paper it was written on.” 

“Dartz's group has published more than us this year.” Pegasus was political enough to avoid speaking his mind openly in front of the room. 

“Quality over quantity.” 

“Not for grants...” Pegasus didn’t know much, but he did know how to play the game. “How many sections of calculus do you want to end up teaching next year, Kaiba-boy? Even teaching won’t fund you forever.” 

The room donned a more somber atmosphere at the admission everyone knew but no one cared to speak allowed. 

“I told you, I’m working on it,” Kaiba hissed. He flopped open a manilla envelope, whipping out some ‘TeXed up document, heavy with pen annotations, and slid it across the table. Pegasus hummed softly in thought, flipping through the final pages in reminder and eyes scanning the end in earnest.

“Well, congratulations, I would call this the first modest progress in months,” He smiled devilishly. “Give your muse a thank you for me.” 

“Whatever,” Kaiba ignored the questioning looks from the table, snatching his papers back. Pegasus had an uncanny talent for being a sort of mind reader and always at the worst possible times. Let him think what he wants, as long as he didn’t know the details…

“I hope you’ll have progress worth presenting soon, I have you signed up for a poster slot at ICM in a few weeks.” 

“ _Excuse me!_ ” He snapped. “When were you planning to tell me that?”

“I know you’re not much for rubbing elbows,” Pegasus said. “But a little networking goes a long way. I only have your best interests at heart. A thank you would be nice now and then.”

Kaiba crossed his arms and turned his scowl up in a portrait of disdain.

“Haga and I are going too,” Ryuzaki offered, probably to reassure him that he wouldn’t be stranded on a fifteen hour flight alone in their advisor’s company but it wasn’t much of a consolation prize. “Maybe we can go see Saint Basil's or something while we’re there.”

“Go yourself,” Kaiba made himself busy with shuffling his papers and watching the clock, trying not to recall his memories visiting Moscow with his father. “You’ve seen a shithole once, you’ve seen it a thousand times.”

“Just because DOMA is there doesn’t make the whole place a write off,” Haga said. “There’s a lot more to see in an 800 year-old city than one mediocre university.”

“Don’t worry, Kaiba-boy, I booked you your own room,” Pegasus interjected before their meeting ran over. “It was cheaper than the migraine medication I’d need to break up the fight otherwise.”

“You could have spared yourself the money and the aggravation if you hadn’t booked one at all,” Kaiba said, making a point of slamming his folders shut and haphazardly shoving them into his briefcase the moment the clock struck ten. 

“Now, where’s the fun in that?”

* * *

Atem heaved a frustrated sigh. It was already 4:30 and he still had yet to make headway on the mission critical decision set out before him. Time was running out. Too many options, not enough information. He’d narrowed it down to four, but the final choice could have lasting implications.

“Why are half the contents of your closet on your bed and the sofas?” Yugi was finally home from the computer lab, and apparently unamused with the tactics of his strategic decision making.

“Please, Aibou, I’m thinking.” He shushed his twin with a dismissive hand.

He was going to meet Kaiba at the usual coffee shop, but surely he didn’t plan to stay there, right in the middle of campus… Should he go with something casual or more formal? Indoor or outdoor? Layers could prepare him for any scenario but were time consuming to strip…

“Okay, well, we’re just going to Ryou’s for DnD, it’s not Paris fashion week. Just wear whatever.” Yugi dumped off his backpack and started changing into something more comfortable himself.

Oh… He’d been so caught up in meeting with Kaiba he’d forgotten to tell Ryou he wouldn’t be there for tonight’s campaign.

“I can’t make it tonight…” He said, embarrassed at his own forgetfulness.

“I thought you already finished Kaiba’s exam?”

“I did bu—”

“Wait!” Yugi spun around, looking at the critically analyzed outfit spreads and put two and two together. “You can’t ditch us for a date!”

“It-it’s not a _date_ ,” He defended. “Date is a strong word. I’d really just call it coffee.”

“Now you sound like Mahad,” Yugi rolled his eyes. “And when has ‘coffee’ ever been more important than DnD night? You’ve _never_ missed the campaign! Ryou even skyped you in from Egypt! You could have said something earlier so he had time to write you out for the night, he works hard on these scenarios…”

“It’s just this one time…” He grumbled.

“What’s gotten into you, I can’t even remember the last time you went on a date. Don’t you usually just…” Yugi waved his hand in a materialization gesture. “Meet people, like, once, and then they bore you so we tacitly agree to pretend they never existed? Is that what happened to Kaiba?”

Atem swallowed in silence.

“It’s a date with Kaiba, isn’t it?!” Yugi’s face turned up in a knowing grin.

“Maybe.”

“Oh my god…” Yugi grabbed his shoulders. “Admit it. You’re totally falling in love with him.”

“Now _that_ is a strong word,” He shook his twin off. “What ever happened to ‘Kaiba is the worst?’ and ‘Kaiba is insufferable?’”

“He _is_ the worst and he _is_ insufferable, but the heart wants what the heart wants I guess.” He started laughing

_“YUGI!”_

“It all makes so much sense now, I can’t believe I didn’t guess it earlier. You haven’t gotten with anyone else all semester, you blow off all your other classes just to impress him, you talk about him _all the time,_ it’s almost nauseating,” Yugi teased. “And now you’re gonna ditch DnD, for the first night ever, for a date.”

“Not a date. He might just want to meet up someplace easy to leave so he can say this whole thing was a mistake…” Atem was genuinely concerned that might still be a possibility, but then why would he have bothered leaving his number? Of course, it might not be his number. He still hadn’t gotten a text back…

“Love isn’t a mistake, Atem.” Yugi smiled and interrupted him before he could rebuttal. “Too late, you already missed your chance to deny it. I’m happy for you. Really! Even if it’s Kaiba.”

“Don’t tell the others where I am.” He pleaded.

“Alright, I’ll cover for you, but you know they aren’t gonna buy it, right?” Yugi said. “When did he ask you? I thought you hadn’t talked to him since Saturday night.”

“He didn’t really ask… he wrote it in the test. The answers spelled out you and me, coffee, Wednesday, 6 o’clock, and then his phone number.”

“Wow, a message hidden in a math test…” Yugi sounded incredulous. “Since when is your Mr. Darcy such a hopeless romantic?”

“Well _I_ liked it…” Atem groused. “Just help me pick an outfit so I’m not late.”

“Just pick it yourself, I don’t know what guys like to see on other guys,” Yugi protested.

“You don’t know what girls like to see on guys either and you still pick outfits to go on dates with Anzu.”

“No, _you_ picked my outfit for my first date with Anzu, remember? Besides, it's different now. We’ve been together for almost six years. She probably knows my wardrobe better than I do at this point.”

“Please, Aibou?” Atem didn’t like to make important decisions without his twin’s input.

“Okay, fine. If you want my advice, just wear something simple. No techwear, no grunge, no weird sneakers. Plain and classic. ONE, and I repeat ONE, necklace. Two rings, max. Keep the focus on you, not the clothes.”

“You’re not any fun…” Atem huffed.

“I think Kaiba wants to go out with Atem, not the King of Chis…” Yugi picked up a short sleeve button down, deep maroon with a pattern that wasn’t too flashy, and a simple gold chain necklace. “Here. You said he liked your tattoos, you can show off the armband ones you got in Egypt.”

Alright. Yugi tended to be a good judge of these things. He finished with some dark-wash jeans, black boots with only a practical number of buckles, and his old reliable leather jacket that matched everything.

“I know dating is its own kind of game…” Yugi gave him a reassuring hug. “But try to have fun.”

Atem briefly considered arriving a few minutes late, the appropriate play in probably any other circumstance, before remembering Kaiba’s strict penchant for promptness and thought it best to start the evening off on good footing, wherever their walk was headed. 

By now, civil twilight was fading out into the blue of early evening with pricks of small silver light dotting the sky one by one on his walk over. The air still held enough chill for light fog to form on his breath and he briefly regretted not donning a heavier jacket. On his approach to the small, student-run 24-hour coffee shop, the sodium lights warmed to life, bathing the campus in a dense, saturated orange glow that even the first spring buds of the trees weren’t immune to. 

Atem settled on a bench across the way, hoping it was dark enough that the broad bay windows could be seen into but not out of. He checked his phone. 5:53 PM. Kaiba was already there, sitting on a tall stool, legs still long enough to reach the floor, at an all too familiar high top table right in front of the window. Atem allowed himself seven minutes to watch. 

His eyes stared out the window, right at him, looking distant and pensive. On second thought, probably meeting his own reflection in the glass. Kaiba was dressed impeccably, and Atem was already beginning to regret Yugi’s advice.

Not just immaculate, but... couture? It felt like watching a wild animal when you’d only seen one in the zoo, to see him out of his work clothes, but this was different from Saturday night. That black turtleneck on black pants was predictable, but his shearling bomber was almost too nice even for Seth. As always, the hemline on his pants fell with perfect measured tailoring on his scuffless shoes. He sipped his coffee without taking off his leather gloves. 

Jacket and gloves on. Kaiba wasn’t making himself comfortable. He checked his watch again, looking impatient. The rest of his appearance had changed but he still wore his cheap golden 1998 calculator Casio, Atem could see it from here. Maybe he was reading too much into this. 

He checked the time himself. 5:59 PM. The bell tolls again. He took a final deep breath and walked over to the shop.

It was surprisingly empty for a weeknight, only a few students sparsely populating the tables, mostly with headphones in, buried in their work. Atem didn’t miss the way Kaiba’s head snapped to attention out of his peripheral vision when the light chime of the doorbell sounded in welcome. 

“Hi” 

A terrible opener, but a gentle lob of the ball into Kaiba’s court. He slotted himself down on the opposite barstool of the narrow, round table. 

“Hi” 

The easy return. A silence settled between them, interrupted only by the loud hiss of the milk frother behind the counter. Kaiba stared pointedly at his drink, picking at the uneven plastic at the mouth of the cup. Another wordless moment passed. 

“Do you… do you mind if I go order something?” Atem asked, mostly to break the tension. 

“They already made it, it’s on the counter,” Kaiba nodded towards the one cup that sat unclaimed, still careful to avoid looking Atem in the eye. 

When Atem returned, Kaiba remained unmoved, staring out the window again instead of at him. He took a sip. Lots of cream, lots of sugar. Just how Kaiba made it for him in his office. He didn’t miss that he’d never bought cream or sugar before he started making two cups.

“You got it right,” Atem flashed a gentle, easy smile. 

“Hardly new…” Kaiba scoffed, but his face tinted one tone peachier than before. 

The espresso machine let out another long hiss. 

“So…” Atem offered an olive branch. “Did you get my text?” 

“Yeah,” Kaiba smiled at that, as though he couldn’t help it and it was an effort to try to suppress the memory.

“Then why didn’t you text back?!” Atem laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.

“I didn’t want you to know you were right,” Kaiba said, finally looking up to meet his eyes. 

“I think it’s too late for that now,” Atem said. “The die is cast.”

“So it is…” Kaiba looked back down to pick at the cup again, struggling with the lack of dexterity through his gloves. Atem pulled the anxious hand into his own.

“Kaiba, I--”

“Seto.” His face bled red all the way down to the mouth of his turtleneck, but like the night in his office he didn’t pull away. “You can… Please… Call me Seto.” 

“Okay,” Atem said quietly, hardly above a whisper. He undid the buckle on the glove, pulling it off and setting it between them. In an unusual turn of tables, Kaiba’s fingers were warm against his cold ones. “Okay… Seto.” 

Kai-- _Seto_ ran his thumb over the veins on the back of his hand, seemingly lost in thought over their shape. He took another sip of his coffee. 

“What were you going to say?” 

“What?” Atem furrowed his brow. 

“Before, I… I’m sorry,” Seto’s face grew even redder. “What were you going to say?”

“I-I don’t remember,” It was Atem’s turn to be embarrassed. “It doesn’t matter.” 

“Alright.”

Atem sat quietly, enjoying the warmth of another hand in his and tracing the lines in Seto’s palm in perfect silence while the barista cleaned the machine and the cafe leaked patrons through the front door and their drinks grew colder and they took small sips until eventually they were empty. 

It was nice.  
Sometimes, talking was worse. 

“Did you want to go somewhere else?” Atem asked finally, giving the one ungloved hand a gentle squeeze. 

Seto looked up to meet him, eyes shifting first from shock, then to confusion, and understanding. 

“Oh, yeah, no…” He swallowed, eyes searching the room for an answer to some desperate yet unstated question. “Yeah, no, let’s not stay here, we can go somewhere else…” 

“You didn’t... have somewhere in mind?” Atem asked incredulously. “You didn’t think you’d get this far, did you?”

“ _No!_ ” Seto jumped to protest. “I mean, _yes_ but--”

“What, did you think I wouldn’t figure it out?” Atem was a bit offended at the thought.

“No!” He insisted. “No, no… I… I was worried you would and wouldn’t come anyway…”

“You ordered me a drink though,” Atem smiled, pulling the hand he still held to his lips. 

“I said I _thought_ you wouldn’t, not _hoped_ you wouldn’t…” Seto shivered at the airy kiss on the pads of his fingers, clearly fighting against the urge to snatch his hand back.

“Then we aren’t going anywhere?”

“We can go somewhere,” He said. “We can go somewhere if you want to.”

“So…” Atem flashed a devious smile. “You’re letting me choose?” 

“Don’t get used to it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for being incredibly patient during this longer-than-anticipated commercial break.
> 
> Do you know how hard it is to find interesting 10-digit numbers? Hard. 
> 
> [Srinivasa Ramanujan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan) is one of my top five mathematicians of all time, so he deserved a nod though. He did a lot more mathematically important things than inventing [taxicab numbers](https://www.math.brown.edu/~jhs/Presentations/TaxicabsTalk2013.ppt#:~:text=Yes%2C%20Ramanujan%20gave%20us%20one,an%20early%20desktop%20IBM%20PC!), like his incredible contributions to number theory and defying racism at Cambridge. You can watch [The Man Who Knew Infinity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Knew_Infinity_\(film\)), a very well done movie about his life that is sometimes on Netflix.


	10. Non-Canonical Isomorphisms on Dating

“And you’ll have table space at seven thirty?”

Kaiba could catch only some of the lines from Atem who was evidently plotting into the phone receiver at a careful distance away to preserve whatever surprise he had in store. From what he did catch, it sounded (uncreatively) like dinner. It didn’t matter, really, so long as Atem didn’t leave, but Kaiba was still mulling over how to open the conversation and worried himself sick at the thought of the night continuing to pass in a silent detente. He sat on the bench outside the coffee shop, wringing his hands in his lap as the cold lingered on the night air. Twilight had faded out early as it was still before daylight savings time.

“Sure, that works… Great, put me down. We’ll be there.” Atem hung up the phone and stuffed it back in his pocket, trying to worm his chilly hands back in as well since he’d overlooked wearing gloves. He walked back over to the bench and he flashed a wily grin, red eyes catching aflame in the orange glow of the sodium lamps dotting the campus, and kicked at his feet for him to get up.

“Cut it out…” Kaiba grumbled without too much bite and readjusted his shearling over his shoulders when he stood. “Where are you dragging me?”

“Don’t sound so excited,” Atem chuckled. His face grew the slightest hint more dour. “Umm… It’s a bit far, I figured…” He paused to chew on his lower lip. “I figured we should get pretty far off campus, you know?”

Atem’s demeanor was a far cry from his usually slick and eloquent self, but the shift was arguably endearing and Kaiba was more at ease knowing he was a bit anxious too. That, and he was grateful Atem had the foresight to run the hell away from anywhere they might be seen in a compromising position.

“Yeah,” Kaiba shuffled his feet and looked expectantly in both directions down the sidewalk but no one seemed to be paying them any mind. “I know…”

“It’s uh, like I said it’s a little too far to walk...” Atem prompted, looking up with a bit of a sheepish expression. “Would you want to drive? I can give you directions.”

“You don’t have a car?” Kaiba crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.

“I do thank you very much, but I walked here,” Atem knocked their shoulders together playfully when he followed Kaiba down the path back towards the math building. “Don’t they at least let you park around here after hours?”

“They still make me pay,” Kaiba groused.

_“What!”_ He said as they rounded the stone façade to the dimly lit and mostly vacant back lot. “I think there’s a word for that. Extortion?”

Kaiba let himself snicker at the joke. Atem seemed to be opening up little by little and the sound of his laughter echoing across the asphalt conjured a warm swooping sensation deep in his stomach. He fished his jangling key ring out of his pocket and Atem followed him to the cheap-priced orange-flag row a football field away at the very back where the boxy white contours of his old diesel Mercedes stuck out like a sore thumb.

“What are you, a dignitary in a banana republic?” Atem beamed when Kaiba walked over to the passenger’s side door to unlock it for him. His cheeks burned bright red at the implications when he swung open the door, waiting for Atem to slide in, and he scrambled to explain.

“Lock’s broken…” He mumbled and stared at his feet. “You can only open it with the key…”

“Thanks,” Atem’s face was soft and he let Kaiba shut the door for him.

“You should put two little flags on the hood, it will complete the look,” He teased when Kaiba slammed his own door and the engine and the heater grumbled to life.

Kaiba rolled his eyes and pulled out into Domino traffic. “That was the Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman W100. They stopped making those in ‘81. This is just an ‘83 300D.”

“Why do you drive a car that’s older than you are?” Atem said. “Oh, take a left here—”

Too late. They were already in the middle of the intersection. Kaiba’s jaw clenched in frustration and his knuckles gripped white on the steering wheel.

“If you’re going to navigate at least pay attention.”

“I can’t help it if you’re distracting. Just head towards midtown.” His voice oozed flirtation and Kaiba tried to ignore the comment and steer the topic back to something easy and familiar.

“It used to be one of my stepfather’s. It rarely breaks and when it does, I know how to fix it myself.”

“Is that why the door is broken?”

Kaiba let out a stiff breath and merged onto the I-9.

After some squabbling and circling the street at least twice while Atem struggled to remember where parking was, they hopped out of the car a few blocks north of their mystery destination. Atem was vibrating with excitement but Kaiba being Kaiba couldn’t resist his penchant for sour comments.

“Do you take all your dates here?” He bit out a touch too sharp, belatedly realizing his own embarrassment at the word ‘date.’ He felt guilty when he caught the way Atem’s face deflated with a subtle pout.

“I don’t go on many dates if that’s what you’re getting at…” He kicked his boot into a pebble and sent it skipping between the cars. They walked with enough berth between them that their shoulders didn’t bump together this time. There was an uncomfortable silence before a knowing smirk crept up on his face and he looked up at Kaiba. “No, I’ve never brought a date here before. I’ve only ever come with my brother.”

Kaiba simply nodded in reply before they stopped short in front of a ground floor entrance to what looked more akin to a professional building than a restaurant with a vinyl decal that read “ACBL – Domino Chapter” on the glass door.

“We’re here,” Atem was positively glowing when he grabbed his wrist and pulled them inside. The interior was… nothing at all like he’d expected. It was essentially a repurposed ballroom—the kitsch kind that you find in cheap Holiday Inns—filled with four-person folding tables and tacky plastic chairs and absolutely packed to bursting with old people. They were possibly the only ones in the whole room without an AARP membership. Everyone was playing cards.

Kaiba leaned forward to hiss in his escort’s ear about _what the hell was he thinking bringing them here,_ but someone beat him to the punch.

“Atem!” A fragile old woman with a strawberry-candy red dress and oversized cat-eye glasses snatched up his hands between her wrinkled ones. “It’s so good to see you. Where is little Yugi?”

“I’m afraid I’m playing with a different partner tonight,” He flashed a devious grin back at Kaiba.

“Oh dear…” She clicked her tongue in concern and squinted through her thick lenses at a list seated on the fold-out church picnic table. “You’re always my troublemaker. Is he ranked at another club?”

“Seto,” He bristled at the strange warmth that bubbled up from hearing the still unfamiliar sound of his first name on Atem’s lips. “Have you ever played bridge?”

“I—” Kaiba paused and his face flared red. Contract bridge was a partner card game. Of course he’d never played. “No. I haven’t.”

Atem’s smile only grew wider as he scribbled on the registration sheet.

“Put us down for an East-West entry,” He said, the old cat was scratching around for more papers and pens. “Do you think you can get us a match against Lumis tonight?”

“Atem…” She peered out in warning over her frames. “You know games are determined by matchpoints.”

“I know, but—”

“And your... _friend_ doesn’t have any points.”

“I have enough to share,” Atem threw in a gratuitous wink and Kaiba rolled his eyes. “Just this once? For me? You know these old tramps complain that I need a handicap anyhow.”

“Just because you’re cute doesn’t mean you’ll get away with it,” She teased, but Kaiba was beginning to understand Atem’s onerous office flirtations when he spotted V.LUMIS/F.UMBRA beside A.MUTOU/S.KAIBA on the registrar. “Here are your convention cards.”

Kaiba looked at a two-page sheet of tiny boxes and blanks with meaningless words about bids and overcalls and openings that might as well have been written in Chinese for all the sense it made. The blank example score sheet was equally esoteric. Kaiba looked at the clock on the wall. Twenty minutes to learn the game before their first match at 7:30. Atem sat them down at an empty, wobbling plastic top table in one corner, trying to scribble on a paper to get his ballpoint pen running.

“What does any of this shit even mean?” Kaiba huffed, running his fingers through his hair and Atem chuckled.

“I don’t know, Seto, I suppose you’ll have to figure the game out quick.” He looked up with a shrewd grin. “Class starts in twenty minutes.”

“Well then I hope you’re a better teacher than a student,” Kaiba’s lips quirked up at the memory of their first game in his office.

“Contract Bridge has more complex strategy, professional tournaments, and detailed laws than any other non-athletic game besides chess,” Atem was filling out his own card with rapid fire memorization. “Of course, bridge isn’t a solo effort. It’s a game about trust and understanding your partner.”

Kaiba shuffled in his chair, crossing his arms.

“The play itself is simple enough. Two partnerships sit across from each other at the table. Everyone is dealt thirteen cards, with the goal of taking the most tricks. Thirteen tricks are played moving clockwise around the table, everyone plays one card and the highest value card wins the trick.”

“I’ve played a trick taking card game,” Kaiba scoffed, looking up at the clock again.

“Well you didn’t say that—”

“I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were…” Atem sighed and chewed on his thumbnail before dropping his hands back to the table. “Right. Anyway. The complicated part is the bidding.”

Kaiba looked back at the card and score sheet but Atem flipped them over.

“Don’t worry about that for now, the card tells your partner and your opponents your attitudes and strategies for bidding,” He flashed another mischievous smile. “I like to think we know each other well enough not to need it.”

“Why would we tell our opponents our strategy?” Kaiba scrunched his face in a frown.

“To prevent cheating,” Atem said. “You technically aren’t allowed to talk to, gesture to, or signal your partner in any way except the fifteen words allowed during the auction when bids are placed. During the auction, players take turns bidding on how many tricks they think their partnership will take in total and what they want the trump suit to be. That means the first partner’s goal isn’t to win the contract but rather to communicate some information about their cards to their partner.”

“How do you communicate if you can’t talk?” Kaiba rubbed his eyes.

“You communicate with your bid. If I bid, say, seven tricks with clubs as trump that means I don’t have a particularly strong hand and my best suit is in clubs. Of course, if you have a very good hand you can bid no trump suit. The highest bid would be thirteen no trump, a grand slam.” Atem explained.

“That’s virtually useless, that won’t tell me anything,” Kaiba said.

“That’s where understanding your partner comes in. Are they an aggressive risk taker or do they prefer to play more conservatively? Do they make the same precision bid every time based on how many face cards they have, or are they flexible? It’s similar to chess in that there are innumerable memorized openings and strategies and the best players know when and how to deviate. But the winners are not the better players but the better partnership, and the best partnerships can predict each other’s moves.”

“Are you a ‘good player’?” Kaiba teased.

“Yuugi and I are a good _partnership,”_ Atem leveled back seriously. “We’ve never lost, and I don’t plan to start today.”

“I don’t lose.” Kaiba watched Atem’s fastidious fingers shuffling a fresh deck of practice cards without looking, a mesmerizing memorized motion, corners never catching on his thin set of golden rings. He swallowed. 

“Good. And a final note.” Atem’s eyes were full of fire and Kaiba was already dreading the self-control required to spend the evening surrounded by strangers with a scant few feet of plastic tabletop between them. “Only three people play each hand.”

“How does that work, a trick is four cards: one from each player at the table.”

“On defense, both individuals play,” Atem’s smile twisted into a teasing smirk. “But, on the team that wins the contract, the partner that placed the highest bid plays from both hands. The other partner lays their cards down for the whole table to see and sits by to watch.”

“That’s the stupidest rule I’ve ever heard,” Kaiba spat. “I’m not letting you play for me!”

“That’s how the game works. Trust, remember?” He was dealing four practice hands out on the table. “Now I _trust_ you can count cards, which is frankly essential for being any good at this game so if you can’t—”

“Of course I can!” Kaiba snapped before he realized Atem was only trying to get his goat with the challenge. His laughter sparkled and Kaiba yearned to reach across, to push back the stray blonde lock that fell between his eyes and made him look too much like his brother. Atem beat him to it.

“Let’s practice bidding with the time we have left.” Atem poked at the stacks of cards on the table. “I’ll keep dealing hands and you tell me what you would bid to signal to me what you have. I’ll do the same and you tell me if you think we should bid for contract.” 

Kaiba flipped over his first set of cards, slipping them around his hand in order of suit and rank, counting faces and crunching probabilities, estimating if Atem’s hand might add to his strengths. He looked up to watch his partner chewing on his own deal, hoping to read some stray tells in the subtleties of his features. When his crimson gaze burned from over the edge of his cards, Atem gave nothing away.

They traded blows back and forth for a while, Kaiba placing bids and Atem guessing what he might have and vice versa. After each round, Atem gave a name to the strategy, pointing it out on the convention card and marking it down as something they might be liable to use. There wasn’t enough time to establish anything more than Kaiba’s own aggressive tactics, but Atem hardly seemed phased by that revelation. For his part, Kaiba read no pattern in Atem’s unpredictable bids at all.

Kaiba was learning not to jump when Atem’s fingers deliberately brushed his to retrieve and assess cards from his grasp. It was difficult to pick a favorite part of Atem when every inch was fashioned for his unraveling. From his blazing hard-to-meet eyes to the lips he’d only felt once, pulled apart by an olive thumb in thought... But his hands were his favorite tonight. Perhaps that might change by the morning, but he followed every russet knuckle, the line of every bone and vein with his shuffles, wishing for the first time in his life to skip the games and pick them up in his own again. 

The old bat who ushered them in started running her mouth from the podium but they were in their own little world, hunched over, whispering and jibing over piles of cards until their faces were a breath apart. The interlude was over too soon, split by the grating of metal chair legs over linoleum and the musical rearrangement of duets from table to table in pursuit of their next match. 

“I hope you’re ready for the exam, Seto,” He could listen to Atem say his name all night, but preferably in a far more secluded setting punctuated by far more breathlessness. “Don’t fail. You’ll disappoint me.”

Kaiba was too distracted to reply. 

They sat down across from one another at a square plastic table with a frayed, gingham vinyl cloth pulled over the top.

“Next time just take me to a church picnic,” Kaiba said. 

“Who said there will be a next time? You’d better not make me lose.” Atem actually threw him a wink. He was disgusted with himself for not being disgusted.

They were flanked by two stuffy old hogs, one that looked primed for the funeral home and the other reeking of cheap tobacco. They moved to hand Atem their calling cards, but he just pushed them away with a chuckle. 

“Can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” He smiled at Kaiba from across the table.

“Who’s this? Where’s your simpleton brother?” The pork-loin one asked. To his credit, Atem didn’t flinch.

“Gentlemen, this is my new partner, Kaiba,” Someone came around and placed a pre-shuffled deck in the tray at the center of the table. “Kaiba, this is Lumis and Umbra, my usual dinner faire.”

There was no _pleased to make your acquaintance_ and Kaiba wasn’t about to fill in the blank. They were spared anymore cutting small talk when the first hand opened. Lumus sat at the north position with the first deal, giving Kaiba the opening bid. Their opponents stared him down waiting for a move, but Kaiba couldn’t piece together anything of value with only seven high-card points. He’d be lucky to take a few tricks at best…

“Pass.” He looked at Atem, who had his own cards pressed together in a pile in his hand already memorized. 

“Pass.” Again, from Umbra.

“Seven hearts,” Atem’s face gave away no extra information and Kaiba was glad they weren’t facing off over a hand of poker. _I have an ‘Opening Hand’, good high cards, best suit hearts._

“Pass.” From Lumis, no overcall. Kaiba huffed and stared at his hand.

“Shut up!” Umbra snapped.

“I—” He started but Atem shot a piercing glare from over his own hand. Right. No talking. Fine. His hand was abysmal and he had only two hearts. A bad match. Hopefully Atem could top this bid… “Seven, No Trump.” _I’m weak over here, a few high cards, no good hearts._

“Pass.” Umbra.

“Pass,” Atem’s face set into a smirk and he set his hand face down on the table. Kaiba set his jaw. 

“Pass.” Lumis.

Fantastic, Kaiba would be playing for them both from a garbage hand. Atem licked his lips and his classic wily grin spread out over his face. Kaiba felt his leg press against his under the table when he flipped his cards over on the table.

“Sorry partner,” Atem chuckled. He had a fantastic hand, ten hearts between them, could have easily bid for higher and swept the game but chose to trust Kaiba’s bid instead…

Umbra opened on clubs, unwittingly a stupid play letting Kaiba steal the lead with one of his limited high cards and run the next ten tricks with their long suit.

_Ace of Hearts._

The heat of Atem’s gaze burned the back of his hands as Kaiba cleared the first trick from the table, watched his reddish and weather-burned face scrunch up in satisfaction at their enemies' dissatisfaction. 

_King of Hearts._

Atem licked his lips, the pink end missing the tip of his round nose only just. There was never any doubt what, or rather who, he was looking at and Kaiba’s chest tightened under that sort of flattering attention.

Who ever looked at him, really? Only glances, curious and disinterested, and nothing more. 

_Queen of Hearts._

Atem hooked his foot behind Kaiba’s ankle, hitching their legs together at the calf until his radiating sun-warm heat bled through both fabrics. He wanted to lean across the table and taste the incense scent of his hair.

_Ace of Diamonds._

Kaiba leaned his knocking knees into the touch, tangling their legs together under the table and almost pulling the wrong card in his distraction.

_Jack of Hearts._

Umbra cussed.  
Atem leaned forward into the table, sliding his hands into his lap, no longer paying any mind to the game running away between them and beaming up at Kaiba’s increasingly flustered face.

_Ten of Hearts._

Kaiba hitched a breath at the heavy fall of Atem’s hand over his knee, running a lazy thumb in circles over the knob.

_Eight of Hearts._

Atem’s chest pressed against the table as he moved closer, daring to let his touch creep torturously slow up his leg.

_Six of Hearts._

Fingers wandered to the precariously sensitive inside of his thigh and Kaiba was torn between pleading for them to continue and begging for surrender. 

_Four of Hearts._

Kaiba fumbled and dropped the card, picking it up and tossing it into the trick and praying their opponents were as blind as they were dumb.

_Three of Hearts._

Atem smiled, or perhaps he was baring his teeth, and Kaiba shivered as nails drew down the curve of his thigh.

_Two of Hearts._

Of the hundred thousand places Atem could have been tonight, he chose him.  
Kaiba glanced up from where the cards fell on the table and felt Atem choose him again, letting out a sigh in the knowledge he’d already been long possessed

Twelve tricks. 

If Kaiba hadn’t been forced to surrender the last to the ace of spades, they’d have made a grand slam, but that was the last thing on his mind.

“I knew I could trust you,” Atem drawled and pulled back to mark the score card. Kaiba would have said he was drowning if he hadn’t thought himself dead on arrival. 

The ride home was easy, full of Atem’s bright laughter and critiques about Kaiba’s riskier plays. About all his favorite bidding strategies and the matches he and Yuugi had won and the time they’d gotten to play a tournament at the Bellagio. About his other games with Lumis and Umbra and better ways they might beat them next time.   
  
Next time.   
Kaiba decided this sort of gushing might be as nice as the rambling about duel monsters.

He parked behind the apartment complex since it wasn’t like Atem had far to walk from there, opening the broken passenger side door and was pleasantly surprised when instead of bolting off to go home Atem lingered beside the car. Kaiba started down the alleyway towards the front, their hands bumping knuckle to knuckle until they found the courage to intertwine. When they rounded the wall, Atem again neglected to leave him quite yet and chased him up the porch steps until there was nowhere else to run.

“You’re a very good bridge partner,” Atem smiled and Kaiba tentatively reached out for his other hand. “I think I’d like to keep you.”

“I bet you would.”

Atem lifted his face to be kissed and Kaiba froze for a moment as if he didn’t understand before he scooped his waist in the hollow of one arm and pressed their foreheads together, stealing another dizzying glance at his delighted expression. Atem waited patiently, toying with the lapel on Kaiba’s coat, until Kaiba leaned in far enough that Atem vanished out of focus and nothing remained to be seen, only to feel the soft press of his parted lips. He relaxed in his arms and Kaiba instinctively pulled tighter until Atem let out the most delicious huff of breath he’d ever tasted. 

He pulled back and gave an expectant look and Kaiba held on to his waist, reluctant to let go so soon, and searched for the right words to fill the silence.

“I’ll… See you Friday,” He said.

“Friday?” Atem said it like a question, as if they weren’t scheduled to meet each other every Friday until May at eight in the morning (preferably earlier).

“Are you going somewhere?” He frowned.

“No, I’ll be there, I—” Atem swallowed and let his hands off his chest and Kaiba was colder for the loss. “Right. Yeah.”

“Good. I mean, great.” Kaiba nodded, mostly to himself. Atem’s hand slipped through his grip when he stepped backward still with that odd searching expression on his face.

“We should do this again,” He smiled, at last taking his hand back. 

“We can,” Kaiba shuffled his feet and shoved his burning hand in his coat pocket. 

“Goodnight, Seto,” Atem’s timbre was as warm as his skin and he walked backwards down the stairs until he finally turned away to cross the street.

“It is,” Kaiba said, uncertain if Atem heard him and followed his figure until it disappeared into the house, wishing Atem might have gone in a different door.

Kaiba dozed for three restless hours before he found himself suspended again by the frayed threads of anxiety in the moonshine. He rewound and played over and over the record of Atem, veiled in the erotic darkness of the dilapicated victorian porch stoop and his mind exhausted the memory easily. Every eventuality that might lead up to a kiss, but the kiss itself smudged out of focus. Insomnia never was a cure for what ailed. He rolled himself out of bed and poured a stiff drink.

He hadn’t even stripped before passing out on the bed and he threw on his coat and unlaced shoes before heading for the door with nothing in mind but the bite of the cold and aimless meandering around the landscape of his own mistakes. He latched the lock behind him.

He didn’t make it far, all five feet beyond the door before he surrendered under the weight of his own exhaustion, dumping himself down on the top stair, the first suitable landing pad. 

Stupid.  
He’d been so _stupid,_ ruined everything, like he always did and now _Atem—  
_ Atem!  
Gone.  
Slipped through his fingers, snapped the line, back over the boat and into the river.

Kaiba sipped his drink and watched a car drive past with one headlight. 

Atem was gone.  
Gone. He was gone.   
Gone, gone, gone gone gonegone _gonegonegone—_

Kaiba’s freight train of thought was halted by a sharp, immistakable buzz pattern from his pocket. 

> 03:41:32 AM MOKIE: are you gonna tell me what happened or what??

Kaiba nursed a drink on the front step of his apartment complex, the beeping of the crosswalk beacons unsilenced despite the empty streets.

> 03:42:05 AM SETO: Go to sleep.

> 03:42:28 AM MOKIE: its not even that late here  
> 03:42:36 AM MOKIE: YOU go to sleep

> 03:42:57 AM SETO: Trying to.

Kaiba took another long sip but didn’t tuck his phone away yet.

> 03:44:22 AM MOKIE: weeeellll if you’re already up anyway…  
> 03:44:31 AM MOKIE: did you finally see any action??   
> 03:44:38 AM MOKIE: you can tell me im not gonna blush

> 03:45:02 AM SETO: No.  
> 03:45:15 AM SETO: And I’m not telling my little brother about it.

> 03:45:47 AM MOKIE: at least tell me where you took him

> 03:46:15 AM SETO: I didn’t take him anywhere.

_MOKIE is typing…_ Stop. _MOKIE is typing…_

> 03:47:15 AM SETO: We went to a bridge club.

> 03:47:22 AM MOKIE: you mean like cards?  
> 03:47:29 AM MOKIE: this guy knows you better than I thought   
> 03:47:33 AM MOKIE: did you have fun at least?

> 03:47:55 AM SETO: We won.

> 03:48:03 AM MOKIE: you still didn’t tell me how you know him

Kaiba stared longingly between the parked cars at the house across the way, but all the lights were snuffed out. It’s not like Atem’s window faced the street. His looked out at the mud puddle they called a lake around back. He checked one last time before standing up to walk upstairs.

> 03:49:24 AM MOKIE: OH MY GOD HE’S YOUR STUDENT ISN’T HE?!?!  
> 03:49:30 AM MOKIE: NOOOOOO!! BROOOO!!!   
> 03:49:24 AM MOKIE: LMFAO SETO YOU DOG!!!!

_MOKIE is calling…_ _  
_ **DECLINE**

_MOKIE is calling…_ _  
_ **DECLINE**

Kaiba fumbled with his key ring while the phone buzzed again, dry swallowing and scratching the knob where the brass bumped on cheap nickel. He slammed it shut once inside. 

_MOKIE is calling…_ _  
_ **ACCEPT**

“Don’t even start…” 

Mokuba’s laughter filtered through the tinny receiver, piquing the cell microphone, and Kaiba tossed him on the bathroom vanity before squeezing minty paste out on a dry toothbrush. He held the thing in his cheek and left a trail of coat and socks on his way to the kitchen.

“SETOOO!” Mokuba’s voice echoed out of the bath and through the bare-naked hallway. “I’M RIGHT AREN’T I?? SAY IT!!”

“Can you not scream in my ear? It’s almost four in the morning here…” Kaiba set water to boiling and rounded back to the leaky bathroom faucet, spitting in the sink.

“Don’t tell me you’re being _gross_ about it,” Mokuba had a hint of seriousness under his humor. “I mean he’s not like _that_ much younger than you, right? You’re not gonna fail him or something if he dumps you are you?” 

Kaiba swallowed the stone in his throat (or maybe it was toothpaste). _If Atem dumped him…_

A middle school word, and hardly applicable to someone you’d only been on one date with. It’s not exactly being dumped if they never call you again… Kaiba ran the frothy white down with warm water, letting it run longer than necessary and fill the space with empty noise for a long moment before he cut it off.

“No, Mokuba…” He stripped his shirt off without looking in the mirror and kicked his slacks into the laundry basket. “I’m not going to fail him when it’s over.”

Neither of them said anything for a soft pass while Kaiba cut the lights out around the apartment and reset the thermostat.

“That bad, huh…” His brother’s voice was almost a whisper over the line. “What happened?”

“I… Nothing, I…” Kaiba paused for a second with his hand on the bedside lamp before setting Mokuba on the nightstand. “It was nice.”

“Then why aren’t you more excited?” Mokuba said. “So you played cards, and what happened after that?”

Kaiba crawled into bed and shut his eyes tight, even though the darkness was thick enough not to need it. He curled up with his knees to his chest, turned in the direction of the phone, exhausted at last.

“I… I might have driven us back to my place,” Kaiba admitted through a hefty yawn.

“You _what?!”_ Mokuba asked incredulously. 

“Don’t get so damn worked up,” Kaiba could already feel himself nodding off, but this was an old habit to fall asleep with Mokuba chattering away and one he missed since his brother had moved out. He picked at the fraying hem on the blanket. “He obviously didn’t stay…”

“So you drove him back to your place?” Mokuba said.

“Mmmm…” Kaiba was tired and not in the mood to reflect any more on his anxieties and social failures. 

“And he got out and walked with you to the door or he left?” He could hear the smile in Mokuba’s voice.

“Door.” 

“Well did he _kiss_ you?” Mokuba teased waiting for an answer, but Kaiba met him with feigned sleep. “Okay so he _did!_ Setooo! You invited him in, right?”

Kaiba’s eyes snapped open in the dark.

“...No?” He swallowed. “He didn’t ask.”

“Bro, nobody is just gonna invite themselves over. Are you reall—” Mokuba started and Kaiba knew he was planning to finish on _really that stupid,_ but he didn’t. His tone shifted to something softer. “Why didn’t you? I mean, really.”

Kaiba pulled his knees closer to his chest and didn’t answer. 

“Seto… It sounds like he’s into you, for real. You don’t have to doubt yourself,” Mokuba had a sixth sense for pinpointing his fears. “Don’t overthink it. Just… Invite him to do something _you_ like to do and at the end, ask if he wants to stay a while. He’s gonna say yes.”

“I’m sleeping.” He meant it. He’d spent the whole day thinking. About work, about Atem… 

Mokuba chuckled and didn’t say anything else. Kaiba let the throbbing of his headache and the quiet sounds of his brother over the phone lull him into a brief nap before another long day and another chance to try again.

* * *

  
Atem studied Mana poking tiny pink holes in her parfait strawberries with the tines of her plastic spork, letting the juices blush the white of her yogurt while she babbled and prattled through their little luncheon. She always lobbied to meet at the French café which served nothing more nutritious than fructose on frozen yogurt or more substantial for the appetite than overpriced pastries of undersized proportions. There was no sense in arguing, though; Mana’s patented pouty face always won her way. 

“…and like, bikini car washes are _so_ overdone, you know? We have to be more original than that!”

Atem had long since polished off his chocolate croissant but busied himself with running his finger around the plate to claim the last of the fluffy crumbs and chocolate cream while he nodded along with Mana’s train of logic.

“And we should pick something more in line with our philanthropy message,” Mana pushed around tiny pink juice beads into a hollowed-out valley of the yogurt mountains, constructing the next perfect bite. “Bringing the shelter animals is totally adorable but I mean like college students shouldn’t really be adopting them anyway?”

Atem _hmmmed_ and nodded some more but active listening wasn’t a necessary requirement for Mana’s hyperactive brainstorming sessions. 

“So then I was like ‘I’ve got it!’” Mana paused for dramatic effect before spreading her delicate palms as though unfurling a banner. “Bikini dog wash!”

“Doesn’t that feel a bit exploitative?” Atem said, still mentally weighing the pros and cons of buying another expensive treat.

“I’m not sure our victims have any concept of shame,” Mana plopped a mouthful right between her teeth, careful to avoid stray contact with her bubble-gum lipstick. 

“And turning dogs into ‘victims’ is in line with the spirit of our animal shelter fundraiser?”

“Who said I was talking about the dogs?” 

“So much for the value of sisterhood,” Atem quipped.

“Who said I was talking about us girls?” Mana gave her spork a sultry twist on her tongue with the next bite and Atem rolled with laughter. 

“Well, _I_ certainly wouldn’t complain,” He said. “But I’m not sure how receptive the brothers would be to that idea coming from me.”

“I’ll have to text Mahaado, he’s your social chair after all.” Mana sighed and dipped her spork back into her soupy yogurt surprise, melting a bit under the café heater.

“You know he’s just going to tell you it’s still too cold for anything involving water,” Atem decided he was in fact hungry enough for another round of sugar fix and stood up from the table. “Although he’d probably try to make the same argument in June. I’ll be right back.”

Atem parsed the plethora of options behind the glass display case, petite cakes and painted macarons in greedy piles between pink roses so perfect they could be mistaken for fakes and flawlessly designed to seduce the likes of Mana into parting with her money. He nearly surrendered to ignoring them all and ordering another pan au chocolat but one of the day’s specials looked delightfully enticing—little brown mille-feuille de café—the only item that would have looked more fitting in a coffee house than at a tea party. He meant to dither a bit longer, but now there was someone queued up behind him so he ordered two slices boxed to go. 

When Atem returned to Mana’s table, the rest of her parfait had gone untouched and turned to mush, severed fruit bits bobbing on the milky sea. Mana had her hands pressed up under her chin staring at the throngs of people bustling up and down the shopping district sidewalk. He thieved the last whole strawberry out of her bowl and if she noticed she didn’t seem to mind. A rare comfortable silence trumped Mana’s habitual bubbly banter and Atem watched her watching well-bundled couples pass by through the glass. She sighed again.

“‘Tem, can I ask you something?” She didn’t turn his way. “And you won’t tell anyone?”

“Of course,” He assured her, furrowing his brow. “I won’t mention it again if you don’t want me too.”

Mana didn’t say anything right away, instead she picked a bit at her bowl as though she might still be interested in finding a few worthy morsels in the leftovers. 

“Do you think…” She started. “Ugh, never mind…”

“What’s wrong?” 

Mana acted as though the cuticle separation on her gel manicure was suddenly the most fascinating thing in the room.

“Do you think Mahaado thinks I’m… annoying?” She mumbled. 

Atem fought the urge to laugh at that but Mana was serious, batting her baby blues to fight back tears. 

“No, Mahad doesn’t think you’re annoying,” Atem couldn’t say it without cracking a smile, though. “Why, did he say something? Didn’t you just have one of your… coffee dates?”

“I don’t know, he was acting all weird and he left early,” Mana huffed. “Besides, they aren’t _dates…”_

“Maybe they could be, if you asked him.”

“Ugh, ‘Teeem!” Mana buried her face in her hands. “Oh my god that’s so weird, girls don’t just like, ask guys out!”

“Who says so?” Atem needled her into a bigger fluster. 

“Mhmmm~” Mana had that mischievous glint to her eyes. “And how did _your_ date go?”

“How does everyone already know I went on a date?” Atem gave up on saving both pieces of cake and opened the box to eat one slice just to have something to do with his hands. “That was _yesterday!”_

“Oh my god spill! What’s he like? Can I see a picture? What did you do? Oh my god did he kiss you? I bet he kissed you! I would kiss you. N-not like that though. You know what I mean.” Mana’s moody weathervane swung in a full one-eighty and she picked up her machine gun babble once again.

“He’s a man.” Atem deadpanned. The coffee-flavored cake was far more bitter than sweet. 

“Obviously.” Mana leaned forward, begging for more details. He just shrugged and wiped his palms down the thighs of his jeans. “Did _you_ ask _him_ out?”

“I don’t see why it matters who asks who out. I’m sure Mahad—” Atem’s attempt at deflection was spiked down. 

_“Did you?”_ Mana pressed.

“Well, _no,_ but—”

“I rest my case.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Atem had an inkling for where she might be going but wanted to make her say it. 

“Well, you know! It’s just you’re… I mean like…” Mana blushed. “I don’t know, I guess I always assumed you were more of the girl or whatever.”

“Mana!” Atem laughed. “That’s not how that works!”

“How would I know!” Mana giggled. “I always figured one of you had to be more like, feminine? For balance? And like doesn’t one of you have to… I mean… _"_ Her voice was a wisp when she spat it out: _“...Pitch and catch?”_

"It's not like that," Atem pushed a bite of cake around the cardboard box without looking up. "It doesn't… I mean yeah someone does, but it doesn't _mean_ anything it's… I guess mixing it up is part of the appeal. For me, at least."

"What do you mean?" Mana spun her own leftovers around again in tiny clockwise circles.

"Oh don’t tell me you just _lay_ there every time,” Atem leaned in with a devious smile and turned the tables on her question. “I never pegged you for the sort of girl to let the guy have all the fun, but I suppose missionary comes with its merits. You never cease to surprise me, Mana.”

“Hey!” Mana puffed air into her bright pink chipmunk cheeks. “I do not! It depends on the guy, on... On the _moment!_ Besides, sometimes it’s nice not to have to do any of the work.”

Atem gave a wily, satisfied smirk and a noncommittal shrug before leaning back and taking another bite of the coffee cake.

“I am _so_ not having this conversation with you!” She pouted.

“I wasn’t the one who brought it up,” He said. “I thought we were talking about Mahad.”

Mana groaned and buried her face in her hands, blush deepening to bright red. 

“I don’t want to talk about Mahaado…” She pouted.

“Okay,” Atem said through a full mouth. When did bitter foods start to grow on him this much? “We don’t have to talk about him.”

Mana nodded to herself, looking back out the window again, but she never handled conversational silences with much grace.

“He’s just so… ugh, you know. _You_ know Mahaado,” Mana started again. “Like I try to flirt with him and stuff but he’s so _awkward_ about it!”

“I’m not sure Mahad is quite the _flirtatious_ type…” Atem couldn’t help but be reminded of his string of flops with Kaiba and their inevitable altercation. 

“Yeah, but then he’s always saying such sweet things, I can’t help it. He... He just acts like I’m _somebody,”_ Mana’s voice lost all its pep and fell into her serious tone. _“_ He doesn’t blow me off like everyone else. I don’t mean you, I just mean _people…_ Mahaado takes me seriously. I thought he was just being nice but it’s not like I pay him for the tutoring or anything.”

“If you’re asking if Mahad thinks of you as a friend, I think you already know the answer to that.”

“Yeah but does he _like_ me?” Mana’s spork poking was at risk of springing a leak in her paper parfait cup. “As more than a friend?”

“I think that’s a question you should ask Mahad, not me,” Atem smiled. “He graduates in May.”

“Don’t remind me…” Mana heaved a hefty sigh. “He’s so… traditional though. I don’t think he’d like it if I was that forward.”

“I don’t believe that’s the problem,” Atem hummed to himself, final bites of cake forgotten for the moment. “Mahad has a lot of respect for you. Maybe letting you make the first move is his way of proving that to you. That he knows you’re capable of making your own decisions.”

Mana pondered this at length, twirling a stray lock of her blonde hair until it shirley-templed against her collarbone. She chewed her lip for a minute.

“How do you think I should do it?” She looked back at Atem finally. “Ask him, I mean. _If_ I did. Hypothetically speaking.”

_“Hypothetically?”_ Atem chuckled at Mana’s furious nods and polished off the last of the cake slice. “I think you should write him a letter.”

“You act like such a playboy but really you’re a total sap,” Mana puffed up her cheeks again.

“It’s worked for me so far,” Atem stood up and grabbed his bag and the cake box. “Anyway, I’ve got to get going.”

“Fine, fine...” She shooed him off and Atem picked up their empty dishes. “Bye ‘Teeem~!”

Mana was already bent over her pink phone again when he left.

Atem sat on the concrete steps, painting figures in the white pavement with a stray cigarette butt lodged under the sole of his shoe with the cardboard cake box seated beside him. He chewed on the string of his hoodie instead of his thumb, trying to break the habit. He felt self-conscious now about his ugly, split nails after watching Kaiba’s perfect manicure play his cards.

He could go home now, eat the cake himself. Give it to Yugi. Leave it in the frat fridge where it’d be gobbled whole by a meandering Jou-squatch in a matter of minutes. Perhaps it was too soon after their date. It was only yesterday and Seto hadn’t invited him to stay. But they had a nice time… didn’t they?

The plastic aglet snapped between his teeth. Atem cussed under his breath, spitting the offending item into the grass. Turning the idea around and watching it refract with possibilities was a waste of energy. Date or no date, Seto was still Kaiba between the hours of 6 AM and 6 PM and liable to yell him out of the building for having the gall to drop by outside office hours. He picked up the box and wandered inside, taking the long way up the stairs instead of the elevator.

Seto’s door was cracked giving Atem the advantage of hovering outside for a moment, listening to his frustrated sighs and board scratching before committing to his plan. He opted not to knock, pushing the door open slow enough to avoid the squeaking hinge and stopped to marvel from the entryway. Seto looked more human by two o’clock, sleeves on his blue oxford turned up at the elbows, but the thin fabric bore creases in the back over his shoulder blades, starch as worn out as the one wearing it. A stray hem of the shirt pulled free in the back where he didn’t notice, probably when he was scribbling those indecipherables at the top edge of the board, far out of Atem’s reach. He toyed with the idea of sneaking up to tuck it in, but he was already pushing the limits of their new-found familiarity simply by being here. He cleared his throat instead.

Seto whipped around, face a fixture of stone but his eyes softened on impact. Atem watched his adam’s apple bob when he retracted his intended opener.

“Hey.” He said instead.

“Go on, say what you were gonna say,” Atem smiled, keeping eye contact as he closed the door, passing the designated guest chair and heading for the one on the other side of the desk. “I’m only here to give you a hard time.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Seto deadpanned. “I still have your test to grade.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

An empty threat, but Atem settled for a seat on the desktop in a show of malicious compliance.

“That isn’t a chair,” Seto observed, which was a subtle change of pace from Kaiba chastising that didn’t go unnoticed.

“And this isn’t for you,” Atem set the box down on the desk over a few stray scribbles of notes.

“What is it?”

“A box that hypothetically contains anything until you open it,” Atem smirked.

“You know, Schrödinger initially proposed the cat-in-the box paradox to demonstrate how senseless the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics was and by leaning on the argum—”

“It’s cake, Seto.”

“I don’t like sweets,” He betrayed himself with his usual tell, turning his one foot over on the rubber running board of his loafer before turning it back.

“How lucky, then. It’s as dry and bitter as you are,” Atem’s mission to stop by and gather another data point on the outcome of their Wednesday night triste wasn’t going according to plan but was going about as well as expected. Seto was as inaccessible as ever, even if he hadn’t run him off.

“Hnn.” He huffed, but he didn’t turn back to the board quick enough to hide the smile creeping up his face. Seto worked quietly for a few moments, filling the silence with the scratching of chalk and some quiet whisper to himself where he picked up whatever he had been doing before he was so rudely disturbed. The silence might have been comfortable in the morning, but Seto’s eyes darted self-consciously to the door when a stray pack of students could be heard strolling past outside.

“I’m sorry,” Atem felt his cheeks burn and he picked up his bag again. “I shouldn’t bother you, I know you’re busy, I’ll just... yeah.”

He threw an awkward thumb over his shoulder and made for the door again. Seto’s eyes were pinned on the plaster-white chalk ready to split in two in his grip.

“Atem, wait—”

He paused, hand on the doorknob. He watched Seto swallow, face mostly obscured by his bangs with the way he looked down.

“I teach a calc class at three…” His voice was hushed. “But I’m free after that if you still… If you want.”

Atem wrestled with the prospect of showing up late to the Thursday night mixer for less than a heartbeat.

“Sure, sounds great,” He tried not to sound too excited.

“I’ll text you,” Seto did that thing with his foot again.

“Finally.” Atem laughed and dipped out the door before his suave composure could break.

After throwing on something a touch more date-worthy than the hoodie he’d gone to lunch in, Atem opted to walk to the address Seto had sent him. In the expected fashion, of course, with no preface or hello. Merely a perfunctory 78 characters punctuated by a time. Walking he settled on because it was almost warm and definitely not because bumming a ride home was an easy strategy for re-rolling the outcome of their previous encounter.

He wasn’t sure what to expect, maybe another round of coffee, but he certainly hadn’t been expecting to wind up at the gates of _Aladdin’s Castle._ The underpopulated arcade had a homely charm to match the orange-and-brown color scheme that hadn’t been updated since its 70’s inception and a few well-worn consoles blended in with the atmosphere better than the _Hotline Miami_ teals and pinks of the newer models. Seto had once again beaten him to the punch, already engrossed in a game under a flashing neon header reading _Duel Terminal_ with several unopened rolls of quarters perched by the screen. Atem fished in his wallet for four of his own before dipping inside.

Atem snuck up behind him, footsteps obscured by the ceaseless _Bling! Bling! Bling!_ Of every dial and knob in the house pleading for attention and waited for the current round to time out. When Seto had suitably obliterated the juvenile AI and NEW GAME blared to life on screen, he tucked his chin over one unsuspecting shoulder and plunked four quarters in the player two receiver with a sparkling _tink tink tink tink!_

“Do you bring all your dates here?” He teased right against his ear.

Seto jumped and reflexively made to rub the ticklishness off his ear with his shoulder but inadvertently wound up nuzzling Atem’s cheek instead. His eyes pinballed around everywhere but Atem’s before settling on the console with a soft smile.

“No,” A brilliant shade of dig-dug red crept up his face. “I’ve only ever come here with my brother.”

The thirty-second countdown timed out and Atem settled on the controls beside him, Seto’s oversized frame making it easy to set one arm down to rest against his, brushing elbows with every press of the buttons. Seto didn’t slide away.

The game randomized decks for both players, introducing an element of luck in addition to skill—something he knew Seto wasn’t too fond of. He checked his draw on the secondary screen beneath his hands. Mostly common traps and low-level monsters, but then…Dark Magician!

“You little shit,” Seto was peeking over his shoulder at his hand.

“Cheater!” He gave him a playful shove back to his side of their ‘arena’.

“You deserve a handicap with luck like that.”

“Are you saying you couldn’t beat me on even terms?” Atem laughed. “I’m inclined to agree…”

“We’ll see about that…”

And see they did. They burned through a whole roll of quarters and Atem won every ‘duel’ despite Seto’s protests that he was simply out of practice since Mokuba had moved away. Even in the face of his string of defeats he couldn’t keep the smile from inching onto his lips. Atem kept the fact he’d never played before to himself.

“Hnn,” Seto was peeling open another roll after his most recent thrashing. “Why don’t we play something a little more intellectually stimulating?”

“I’ll let you pick,” Atem drew a finger down the back of one arm, just to watch Seto’s hands freeze up at the touch. “Loser’s rights.”

“Not for long,” He grumbled, stuffing the remaining rolls into his pockets and handing a few to Atem. They made their way over to a particularly secluded corner of the game hall where several vintage consoles still glowed by their lonesome, looking not unlike a well-loved stuffed animal tossed in the closet when its owner grew up without it. No one else bothered to so much as look in this direction. They were alone.

Seto picked Pac-Man.

“Not even Ms. Pac-Man?” Atem chuckled. “I know you’re not interested in women but she gets four mazes instead of one.”

“You first,” He plunked a single quarter in the slot and the yellow ball and his pack of ghosts hummed to life.

“If you insist, but I would have had more fun beating your score,” Atem placed both hands on the joystick and focused intently on devouring white dots.

He could feel Seto hovering, breath a bit short, before he made up his mind to wrap his arms around him from behind, setting his chin on one shoulder to watch. Atem faltered and had a most unfortunate run in with Clyde. He cursed under his breath and felt Seto’s chest hum with a snicker. 

“How is this your idea of ‘more intellectually stimulating’?” He narrowly dodged another precarious corner with Inky by dipping out stage left.

“Pac-Man’s world is deceptively complex,” Seto’s nose tracing the curve of his ear was shattering any semblance of his concentration on the game. 

“I suppose it's wrought with paranormal occurrences and meals made of pixels but like I said—he only gets one map,” Atem lost another life when teeth caught his earlobe and warm breath skirted across his face.

“The map is the interesting part,” Cold fingers found the thin strip of skin poking out from where his shirt rode up his back. “He leaves the top, comes back from the bottom. Leaves the right, comes back from the left. It’s an interesting world, the world of Pac-Man...”

Seto’s hand made contact with his ribs and Atem shuttered, losing a life when the little yellow hero stayed in place a second too long and was swarmed by assailants. 

“Cheap trick,” But he leaned into the touch. “Your turn.”

Before he started the next game, Seto pulled out an old rectangular grocery receipt and a ballpoint pen, smoothing it out on the console top and scribbling a rudimentary reproduction of the Pac-Man map on the blank side, complete with the top, bottom, left, and right doors filled in. 

_“You_ figure out how the doors come together while _I_ trounce your embarrassing score,” Flirtation or no, he was evidently as serious as ever about victory. Atem watched for a moment while he nonchalauntly navigated the screen with a sixth sense for the way the ghosts were programmed to move and easily gaming the system. Practiced hands.

He looked back at the slip of paper. Top to bottom. Left to right. He wrapped each end to meet its partner. 

“Pac-Man lives in a doughnut world?” He said, letting the paper fall open on his palm again. “Funny I guess, but hardly interesting.”

“He lives _on_ a doughnut world. But wrong,” Seto’s classic ‘gotcha!’ smirk painted his face. “Do you want a hint?”

Atem looked at the drawing, but nothing new revealed itself. “Fine.”

“Look at the game again, but this time imagine you’re looking at it from Pac-Man’s perspective. What do his left and right look like?” 

Seto moved the joystick right down an empty blue hallway, and exited south before Pinky could catch up. He reappeared from the north, knocking the joystick right again around another turn. From Pac-Man’s perspective…

At the top of the map, Pac-Man travels north. Seto moves the joystick right. Pac-Man moves to his right. But at the bottom of the map… Pac-Man travels south. Seto moves the joystick _right_ but Pac-Man turns to his own _left…_

“When you travel through a door, Pac-Man’s left and right get swapped,” He said, watching the same phenomenon occur for the east and west exits. 

“That would be illogical,” But Seto’s pleased smile told him he was on the right track. “What sort of world would Pac-Man have to live in for left and right orientations to always remain preserved?” 

Atem looked at the paper again, this time putting little arrows at each door that pointed to “Pac-Man’s right” and attempting to match them up again. For the arrows to point the same direction, he had to twist the paper before joining top and bottom, but that made it impossible to match the left and right doors properly. 

“It’s impossible, the paper would have to intersect itself,” Atem huffed. 

“Not impossible, we’re playing Pac-Man right now,” Seto had long surpassed his own score. “You’ve solved this before, in your Playfair’s Axiom proof.”

That had involved folding the paper, but he’d already done that here. 

“I’m out of directions to fold,” He meant it as a joke, wiggling the receipt in Seto’s face in a hollow attempt to get him to lose. 

“So make a new one,” He shrugged. 

“If you had four dimensions instead of three...” Atem pondered, struggling to imagine such a thing and failing spectacularly. “You could fold the paper in a way that wouldn’t intersect itself?”

“Is that a question or an answer?”

“Is this a class or a date?” He bumped Seto’s arm into getting gobbled by a ghost, but he didn’t complain as much as expected. “It’s an answer.”

“And you’re right,” Seto said, losing another life soon after Atem started tracing up the inside of his forearm. “Pac-Man lives on the 2D surface of a 3D manifold embedded in 4D space.”

“How peculiar...” Atem’s hand wandered higher, across his chest and up to his opposite shoulder. “You’re an abysmal flirt.”

“Then go home,” Seto’s eyes were glued to the screen but the game was all but lost. He licked his lips.

Atem tucked a hand around his cheek and with the softest of shepherding turned his face to meet his own before tip-toeing up for a brush of noses, then of lips. Hesitant, until committed, and with far too much teeth and tongue for even the most out of the way corner of the arcade. Seto’s hands settled on his hips, pinning him between his body and the long-forgotten game, with a swipe of tongue against his parted lips. His hands stiffened with a start at the distant sound of laughter. Atem pulled back. 

“I want to kick your ass at skeeball,” Eyes still locked on lips, it came out far too sultry for the subject matter and anyone but Seto would have burst out laughing. “Loser’s choice.”

Seto smiled and pressed two rolls of quarters into his hand.

900  
900   
900

Atem was, as expected, rolling a perfect score on every frame. He’d already hit the jackpot twice and the machine hadn’t stopped spitting out tickets since he walked up to it. _Skeeball is a dumb game_ Seto had said. _Skeeball doesn’t have optimal ticket-to-quarter profit_ _margins_ Seto had said.

What Seto had actually meant was _I’m a Skeeball catastrophe who can’t even hit the 30 point circle._

Atem: 900 again  
Seto: 180

His next roll missed the ball hop entirely and jumped the fence into Atem’s lane (only barely rolling back down the hill, thus sparing his perfect record from an unfortunate blemish).

“I’m _done_ with _Skeeball…”_ He toed the Himalayan range of pink tickets forming between them. Atem roared with laughter.

“It’s a game of technique, I thought you’d like that.”

Seto put another quarter in the machine with a sigh and another nine balls spat out of the return. He picked one up, but Atem grabbed his hand before he made another inelegant, haphazard toss down the lane. 

“I’ll show you,” He ran his thumb over his knuckles. Seto opened his mouth to argue before he realized the instruction wasn’t the point. Atem pulled apart his pale, slender fingers and reset them in a wider, looser grip and drew his arm back.

“Use your arm’s momentum,” Atem rested a hand on his back, massaging out the tension from his shoulder to his neck, finding a plethora of stuck knots along the way. He felt Seto swallow a pleasant sound before it could escape. He guided his swing, hands still clasped until the motion was a free-flowing pendulum. “Let go just before the top of the arc.”

He allowed Atem to swing his arm twice more before letting go. 50 points!

Seto picked up another ball and looked thoughtfully down the lane before glancing sidelong in Atem’s direction. They played all nine rounds hand in hand.

When they finally ran out of quarters, the ticket pile was too much for Atem to carry, a pink crinkled ball in his arms with a pink tail trailing behind. Seto didn’t offer to help, saying it was far more amusing to watch him struggle. They took turns feeding them into the ticket counter, the dial whirring until it spat out a receipt for 3567 points eligible for redemption. 

Even with Atem’s skeeball slaughter, they only had enough tickets to pick some trivial trinket out of the glass case, not the back wall. They were both drawn to the duel monsters figurines.

“We’re getting the Blue-Eyes,” Seto said, looking up at the teenage cashier, completely unembarrassed by his own request.

“Who said you got to pick? I won all the tickets!” Atem pouted. 

“You won _most_ of the tickets, first of all, and they were _my_ quarters.”

“And _you_ invited _me_ on a date so I get to pick,” Atem whispered low enough so the cashier wouldn’t hear. Seto blushed and didn’t argue. “I want kuriboh.”

The wide-eyed figure was small enough to fit it in his palm and he pressed it into Seto’s. 

“You keep him.”

“Thanks, I hate it.” Seto smiled and stuffed it in his coat pocket.

By the time they settled in the car, it was already past nine. Atem casually rested his feet on the dashboard and slipped his phone out of his pocket. He was right to keep it on silent. Apparently, Malik and company had turned up to the party. His screen was ablaze with a frenzy of angry texts and five missed calls from Seth demanding that if he wasn’t in a coma he’d better turn his happy ass up to the house in the next ten minutes or all the gods of Egypt couldn’t be tasked to intervene on his behalf.

That was an hour ago.

He slipped the phone back in his pocket right as Seto slammed the drivers side door and wordlessly wrapped one hand around his bare ankle to pull his feet back on the floor. Seth could handle it.

By the time they made it back to the reserved car park behind Seto’s apartment building, Atem could feel himself twitching in anticipation. He waited for Seto to open the passenger side with the broken lock before standing between him and the door, preventing its closure and stalling for a few spare seconds before they walked around front.

“I had a nice time.” The night air was cooler than the day and little puffs of breath spilled out in the air between their faces. 

“Me too,” Seto moved to close the door and Atem stepped out of the way before his hand left the handle and resettled on his back, pulling them towards the thin alleyway that led to the front entrance. 

_Don’t fuck it up this time, please, don’t fuck it up this time._ His mind screamed, drifting closer into the tentative embrace, careful to make it seem like a flippant, casual gesture as they rounded the brick retaining wall at the edge of the building only to be met with the bright glow of the sodium street lamps…

And the boisterous rampage currently exploding across the street on the front lawn of Delta house. Trap music wafted on the air, pounding base unfettered by the several counts of verbal and physical assault between men kicking and gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer. Was that… Mahad? With Rishid in a choke hold? Maybe it was Karim. Please let it be Karim. 

For his part, Seto seemed entirely unfazed by the ruckus for the time being, lost in his own thoughts. Atem followed suit, pinning his eyes on his boots and hiding himself from view on the other side of Seto’s towering frame. Couldn’t they have chosen any other night for a super smash yard brawl? He couldn’t believe the campus police weren’t already on the scene. He’d have some serious defusing to do. Seth _could not_ handle that gracefully.

They marched up the steps, stopping before the door in a spot partially obscured by the ornamental shrubby of the flowerbeds. Seto let go of his back and Atem caught a glimpse of Jou committing some heinous act of bottle smashing from his periphery before looking up to meet nervous blue eyes. 

“Do you…” Seto looked ready to dissolve into the concrete. “Do you want to come in?”

The sound of smashing glass and a blaring car alarm shattered any semblance of intimacy they might have stolen beside the hedges.

“Yes,” Atem sighed, watching Seto fumble the keys in his coat pocket. “Yes, I’d love to come inside…”

The only saving grace to the shitstorm engulfing the frat lawn was no one would be paying attention to what he did next. Atem reached up both hands to rope his fingers through the back of Seto’s hair, crushing their lips together in a heated, unrushed kiss. Seto’s hands stilled their shaking when his cool touch wrapped around Atem’s wrists. The moment begged to linger but was over far too soon. He held Seto’s face in his hands, hoping his expression would channel his earnestness when he said:

“Next time. I promise. You have no idea how much I’d rather be with you right now.”

He placed one more reassuring peck on Seto’s stricken face and turned to run off across the street.

Next time.  
Next time for sure. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Mathematical Disclaimer!_ Look. I know The Pac-Man world thing is not technically speaking correct BUT it’s easier to visualize than the real answer AND I need to tease non-orientability as a segue into Kaiba’s thesis problem. Resident topologists and other curious audience members are formally invited to throw hands with me about how Pac-Man actually lives on a [Clifford Torus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_torus) not a [Klein Bottle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle) and/or [Nash Embeddings for Atari games](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qu3WETuf6c) on discord/tumblr.
> 
> You like chess and Yu-Gi-OH! for their over complicated rules and strategy? Then boy do I have the [card game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_bridge) for you! (Please learn contract bridge so I don’t have to play with old people I beg)
> 
> It’s a [fic playlist!](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7fGVsklekIv5PMenbi1K2X)

**Author's Note:**

> ♡ Please leave your thoughts in the comments, I'm always striving to improve my writing! ♡
> 
>  _Formerly known as **talladeganights**_  
>  Find me on Tumblr: [RookSacrifice](https://rooksacrifice.tumblr.com/) (main) and [atembomb](https://atembomb.tumblr.com/) (Yu-Gi-Oh!)  
> Find me on Twitter: [@RookSacrifice](https://twitter.com/RookSacrifice)  
> Roast me in the [Prideshipping Discord](https://discord.com/invite/rdqAndnaB2)
> 
> If this story piqued your interest in math, here are some fun resources:
> 
> My favorite book, an absolute banger: [Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach)  
> "By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence."
> 
> [A Mathematician's Apology](https://www.math.ualberta.ca/mss/misc/A%20Mathematician%27s%20Apology.pdf) by G. H. Hardy: A spirited defense of mathematics as an art form and aesthetic pursuit


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